saturday night fevaaaaaaaaaa. not exactly saturday though.

Well, what's reaching fever pitch here in Singapore is the upcoming F1 race held from 25 to 27 September 2009. It's the first night race in the whole world, and this is the 2nd year that Singapore is hosting this prestigious and supposed glamour that comes along with it (think Monaco). It's all up to the Singapore organisers to put out all stops to make this year's event even better than last year's, which set the bar pretty high, in the eyes of most industry insiders. That said, something else is reaching fever pitch, and that's FEVER RAY.

Some may have heard of The Knife, and in fact along with Fever Ray, I've featured them before. The Knife is siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer, who run Rabid Records, which also released Fever Ray's eponymous album. So now, The Knife is taking a supposed 3 year hiatus, and Olof has gone back to working on his solo DJ project while Karin... obviously did something. Something that could be so huge and reach fever pitch in the genre of electronic music - releasing her first full length solo album.



While I won't profess to know much about electronic music, I think anybody with a discerning ear can tell that Fever Ray is something different (whether good or bad is another question altogether but I'll leave that for later). So electronic music sounds electronic (it's really retarded but for the lack of a better word, I'm really bad with words), there's a different spin to her electronic, which I'll put it as tribal sounding? I feel as if I'm being tied to a totem pole, with these face painted tribal people dancing around me. Ok I digress. But there's this manic, demented and catatonic feel to her songs. The lyrics, the melody, the accompanying electronic beats. Does "i learned to not eat the snow/my fur is hot, my tongue is cold" sound vaguely sane? Seems like she wants to become an animal or sorts to me. This unhinged feeling resonates throughout most of the album, accompanied by a alluring sort of warbling and elusive feel. It's like the lyrics are floating towards me, and try as I might to grab it, everything just slips through my fingers. Again, the discerning ear is able to tell that there are all sorts of different sounds, produced by a plethora of instruments I would suppose, proof of her experimentation in this genre.



When I Grow Up evokes a certain rawness, coupled with measured insanity, "i put my soul in what i do/last night i drew a funny man/with dark eyes and a hanging tongue" You would give your all say, in your favourite sport, or maybe in rigorous academia, or even drawing. Yet all her soul was put into what she did, drawing a funny man with dark eyes and a hanging tongue. Seven is a stark contrast, singing about how she talks to a friend she knew since she was seven, about banal things such as the dishwasher tablets, intimate stuff like love, and dreaming together about heaven. But one might be inclined to wonder if that friend actually exists. What is said at her site, is that you can figure out for yourself whether a song such as If I Had A Heart, which sings of “Dangling feet from window frame/ Will they ever reach the floor/ More give me more give me more”, is inspired by observing her young children. Or if Concrete Walls, despite its ghostly demeanour (that seemingly masculine vocal is, as always, Karin working the voice transformer) and sense of entrapment, is actually about new motherhood, as revealed in “I live between concrete walls/ In my arms she was so warm/ Eyes are open and mouth cries/ Haven’t slept since summer.” Or whether the regular references to snow reflect anything more profound than the national climate. (Note: I took this from her site because I wanted to present a different side to what her album is like, and it's hard to say what was said without differing much from it, so I figured showing everything as it was. So note that the portion after the 'her site' link, was not written by me.)

This is a Swedish gem (more and more good stuff coming from this Nordic country it seems), and I hope more can actually uncover it's brilliance. That said, Karin/Fever Ray's different is something sublime, and it enthralls you for all it's feverish mania. Personally, I can't find anything to fault in this album, and it could mean more to come for both Karin herself, and The Knife as a duo. To sum this album and Fever Ray up succinctly, one would only need to look at If I Had A Heart's "more, give me more, give me more". More indeed.


Fever Ray - If I Had A Heart

Fever Ray - Concrete Walls

Fever Ray - When I Grow Up (D Lissvik Remix)

Fever Ray - Triangle Walks (Rex the Dog Remix)




Bonus:
The Knife - Heartbeats (Rex the Dog Remix)