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Fever Ray

Intergalactic Lesbianism of the 21st Century

By Sergio Pulido 19.05.18

Fever Ray is the alias of Karin Dreijer for her production as a solo artist. After a debut with a homonym album in 2009 that was something like a slightly darker version than what she did with her original band The Knife, it took her almost nine years to edit its sequel. The road to the album "Plunge" was quite difficult: in those years she devoted herself to the last tour and later dissolution with The Knife, she divorced the father of her two daughters, she made several bowling as a DJ in different parts of the world, and she was assumed as queer, fluid gender, or directly as gay / lesbian.

All those labels serve her and all mark the philosophy of this new work that came out at the end of 2017 and is almost a conceptual album on sexuality in our days. The songs are very militant and direct. "This Country" asks for "Free abortions and clean water. Nuclear Destroy Destroy boring. This country makes it hard to fuck." In "An Itch" she talks about group sex, and in "To the moon and back" she tells us the delights of oral sex between girls. All this manifesto also comes with a radical change in sound: now it sounds much more psychedelic for some moments and more industrial and abrasive for others, the album does not have many easily recognizable melodies as the previous album has, it requires more listening.

The image has also changed: goodbye to the almost gothic aesthetic of the past album: now we see a kind of S&M from outer space where female beauty can take floral, muscular, zombie or extraterrestrial forms. Nothing is left to chance. As a good Scandinavian, Karin is a very cerebral person who is reconnecting with her body and her sex, and she wants us all to participate in that discovery of pleasure and pain, against all conservative power, against any establishment.

  • Fever Ray Primavera Sound 2018

    Photo: Martin Falck