Few acts in electronic music have been as thrillingly enigmatic as Fever Ray, the solo project of The Knife’s Karin Dreijer. Their 2009 eponymous and lauded debut album introduced Fever Ray as a genderless forrest spirt, a witchy and often faceless being hidden beneath primordial masks and tribalistic markings. Then, they disappeared, to return suddenly with 2017’s Plunge, which saw Dreijer morph Fever Ray into a death-metal shirt wearing riot girl surrounded by a troupe of neon spandex clad acrobats. The music followed suit, shifting from icy and sparse witch-house to buzzy post-punk synthpop with a distinct queer feminist edge. No one would blame them for being exhausted by this constant metamorphosis. On their new single What They Call Us, they allude to this while introducing us to the latest incarnation of the Fever Ray avatar.
Download and stream What They Call Us here
What They Call Us returns Fever Ray to their earlier sound somewhat, with Dreijer again distorting and morphing their voice with a familiar touch of genderfuckery. The music is again sparse, clinical. Epic drums thunder in the distance, undulating pads twist and shimmer with Dreijer’s voice. They open with an apology that hints toward succumbing to the pressure of the Fever Ray mythology, a subtle hint of disappointment in themselves, “First I’d like to say that I’m sorry. I’ve done all the tricks that I can.” There’s a morose sense of returning to one’s self, the song littered with self-referential asides. The looming primal dread that characterises Fever Ray’s debut is back, fused with the electricity of Plunge and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it callback to When I Grow Up. “It’s a common misperception, this is not a band,” Dreijer reminds us. In the accompanying music video, Dreijer presents Fever Ray as a pallid, zombie-like office worker jaded by the mundanity of their everyday hustle, struggling as the song’s message of self-entrapment looms large, “my plan was flexible. Don’t get stuck anywhere.”
Watch the music video for What They Call Us below.
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