Fever Ray – Fever Ray Review
Dear Odin, I’m doing an actual review on something current. Next thing you know it pigs will be flying around shooting rainbows out of their asses and Jesus will be coming back as a London mobster named Charlie (Or Chaaaaalie as they pronounce it in those glorious films).
Fever Ray is the solo project for The Knife‘s female half Karin Dreijer Andersson. Personally I became excited by this self-titled album after seeing the music video for If I Had A Heart which was an incredibly eerie journey that showed us how creepy it would be if a couple of kids, some pants-shittingly terrifying people wearing masks and a dog wandered around a land full of dead people in the middle of the night.
Now on to the album. Fever Ray is one of the best albums to listen to at three in the morning after you’ve tried to go to sleep for the tenth time. It just works with insomnia so well. Apparently most of the songs were created in the sleepless hours following the birth of Andersson’s second child, which makes this album even more suitable for late night playing. It’s unbalanced, dark, weird, twisted and just plain fucked up…which is how most of us feel when we can’t sleep.
I’m not sure if I’m going mad or not, but I can really hear a Peter Gabriel influence in this album. The 80s-style synth, and voice filters just scream Gabriel while her vocal tone reminds me of Kate Bush (though just a little bit). i don’t know…I just get a sense that in these songs there’s an ode to the darker side of 80′s pop and that fills me with a bit of giddy nostalgia and horrible dread. There’s no other song in the album that represents this better than the song Seven.
In short, Fever Ray is an album that needs the help of the environment around you so it can be fully appreciated. It doesn’t really hold out well in the day time, but when it’s playing at around 2 or 3am, it sounds magnificent and will help see you through your late night insanity.
Here are some mp3s from the album.
If I Had A Heart
Seven
When I Grow Up
Tags: album, Fever Ray, Insomnia, The Knife
