Fever to Tell…
This week’s New Music finds former The Knife singer and cofounder returning for their third solo album after six years away. Despite the hiatus, their personal style of inventive synth-industrial-art-pop fusion is as weird and wonderful as ever.
Radical Romantics
Fever Ray
Post-Industrial Art Pop
Swedish experimental electropop duo The Knife were a massive monolith on the scene for the better part of two decades. 2006’s Silent Shout is easily in the upper echelon of electronic albums from that decade, showcasing a genius-level understanding of minimalist techno balanced with electroclash and EBM beats. When the duo announced their dissolution following 2013’s Shaking the Habitual—a stunning masterclass in influence-hoarding and genre-mixing: experimentalism, pop, and abstract dark ambient—it seemed as though there would be a hole in the industry that no one could possibly fill.
Fortunately, Karin Dreijer had already begun their solo career as Fever Ray, with 2009’s spectacular self-titled debut. Fever Ray proved that Dreijer could carry the torch when the time came, and also displayed their penchant for combining synthpop and darkwave into new, atmospheric, surreal experiences.
Now, 14 years later, they’ve done it again, mixing industrial influences with experimental pop and synthwave to form a truly unique, darkly quirky take on indietronica.
Radical Romantics is difficult to discuss, but only because it is so delightfully strange. The stuttering synth stabs and political nature of opener “What They Call Us” are backed by shaking and rattling machines sampled from a less technologically advanced time, which is then perfectly juxtaposed by the eastern-inspired pitch-shifting loop of “Shiver” complementing Dreijer’s exquisitely delivered words of caution, “can I trust you?”
“Even It Out” is a dark, hard, EBM song, clearly wearing its Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross guest production on its sleeves, complete with distant, ghostly piano and their trademark eerie scratching, while the dangerous obsession expressed in “Carbon Dioxide” is deliciously paired with a plinking techno beat that’s ready to burn down the dance floor.
All these contradictions and more lie just under the surface of Radical Romantics, making it one of the more confusing experiences of the year so far, but also one of the most rewarding. Karin Dreijer has created a richly detailed world, one where the search for meaning is as terrifying and sensual as the vast and endless sea.
