futuristic malaise

So I’m slowly getting into the Fever Ray record that everyone has been talking me into. I was duly bewitched by the thick reams of atmospheric music that draw from the same dark reservoirs of the Knife’s pivotal 2006 album Silent Shout. And perhaps more so than in Silent Shout, the Fever Ray songs are made wholly in the dark. Karin Dreijer Andersson is an artist of cold pursuits – in her hands, digital pop melodies and strangely animated vocals are twisted into sallow proportions with the single-minded precision of a microphone contortionist. As the brooding subterranean synthesizers of Fever Ray opener “If I Had A Heart” pulse along hypnotically, the effect is one of getting sucked deep into its vacuum of futuristic malaise. Dreijer Andersson’s command of lyrics might be considered sparse but the words hit just the right mode, a constellation of shadowy notes to fill the narrative spaces the music so obsessively conjures up. Other key album tracks such as "Keep the Streets Empty For Me" and "Seven" are darkly nourished, keeping with the dry and dusty soundscapes. Satisfaction comes mainly though from how well Fever Ray packages her songs’ alienating beauty into a work of quite mainstream appeal, it must be said – take her sophisticated, superbly accessible single “When I Grow Up” (also the most Knife-like moment on Fever Ray).