Radical Romantics - Fever Ray: Review
is the solo project of Swedish musician Karin Dreijer who is most well known as one half of electronica duo The Knife alongside their brother. While it's been 10 years since The Knife last released new music Fever Ray released their second solo album back in 2017. Fans were excited for Radical Romantics not only because Karin was returning to releasing new music, but also Olaf Dreijer, the other half of The Knife, is returning with production and songwriting on many of these tracks.
Review by Lav:
With a recent video I've been working on covering the best albums of 2013 and the great trio of singles Karin has released dating back to last year, I've rekindled my love for The Knife. Revisiting some of their old material that I've always loved and hearing these new songs gave me expectations for this record that I felt might be a bit much. Turns out I was wrong because this is seriously a wonderful listen that sees Karin not only writing phenomenally catchy tunes but pushing their sound into ambitious new territory with great production throughout.
The production being great is no joke and we saw it all over the record's three singles. What They Call Us is the opening track and I've liked it since I heard it last year with the pounding bass and infectious synth line. Its combination of great refrains and wonderful instrumentation is a real treat. Carbon Dioxide might still be my favorite of the singles with an infectious drum loop and a mountain of catchy melodies. The song pulls off being so dancy and catchy without sacrificing any of its wandering romantic narrative. The finale which just piles on layers and layers of synths for the final refrains might be my favorite moment on the entire album.
The third and finale single Kandy is also a highlight with squeaky synth lines and yet ANOTHER series of catchy vocal lines. It's grown on me pretty much every time I hear it and it fits in great on the album. My favorite of the deep cuts is Shiver which has a really interesting lyrical theme revolving around girls whose sensuality is more gentle and quietly intimate in the way that you don't wanna "thrust" them, just watch them shiver. It's a very specific and very visual manifestation of sensuality that I like quite a bit and all the Bjorking around that Karin does in the second half vocally adds to it quite a bit.
I can't say I'm quite as crazy about New Utensils and Looking For A Ghost but they're both far from duds. Utensils is just as sonically playful as most of the songs here using its two-channel sounds really well though I can confidently say I have absolutely no idea what the lyrics are actually about. By comparison, Ghost is much more clearly a love song, or at least as much of a love song as we're gonna get from Fever Ray. It begins with very little belief in actually finding love but slowly warms up to the idea as Karin actually does find the ghost they're looking for. It's a cute track even if the sour note it ends on kind of comes out of nowhere.
Even It Out is definitely the most confrontational songs on the album mostly coming from Karin's snarling vocals but also the way the track just surrounds you with sound courtesy of production from Nine Inch Nails. The track North also features Nine Inch Nails production and it has the bleakest instrumental on the entire record. Even though I like the sound of it, it's definitely a hard contrast from much of what came before, though it does signify a shift in the sound of the album across the final three songs. Tapping Fingers which immediately follows is also on the reserved side with ghostly vocals that layer in and out of the mix. My only major complaint about the song is that it ends completely out of nowhere and sort of just tepidly fades out.
Closing track Bottom Of The Ocean is one of the most interesting and I suspect will turn out to be one of the most controversial songs here. It's basically an instrumental where Karin uses their wordless vocals more as an instrument themselves. While it's definitely indulgent hearing them sing the same melody for seven minutes to close the album out, the instrumentation behind them is also evolving and shirting in ways that are compelling enough for me to sometimes even lose track of the vocals entirely.
This album is great. While not every song is killer from start to finish and it starts off on a much more exciting note than it ends with, I see the merit in pretty much everything it tries. Karin has fresh ideas, interesting songwriting and song structure, and wonderful soundplay complimented by the return of their brother on production. Given that I and many other fans felt the last Fever Ray album was a bit of a disappointment, I'm happy to say this felt like an excellent return to form from Karin. 8/10
For more great experimental music check out my review of Xiu Xiu's Ignore Grief
