I have loved The Knife and Fever Ray for several years now. Their combination of haunting vocals and droning electro beats hits my musical sweet-spot just right. So as soon as I learnt Fever Ray was touring to promote her new record, I bought tickets for her London show without having even heard her new album. And then I spent long months eagerly waiting for the concert and slowly listening to her new album and following the slow release of her promo videos and music videos.
I must confess that I do not like her new album as much as her first one. There was something otherworldly and a little bit folky to her first album that was just perfect for me. Since then, she has gone through a divorce and re-invented herself and her sexuality, something that she showcases in her second album.
Plunge is grimier, sexier, filthier with all sorts of BDSM overtones and an undercurrent of violence. It’s a good album, and the more you listen to it, the more it grows on you. Whereas the imagery and feel of the first album was more of the artist in solitude or in nature, this new album is all about relationships. Passionate, violent, self-destructive, fucked-up relationships. And the imagery is darker, all the music videos taking place in highly fake indoor spaces.
One thing that I had heard and loved about her tour, is that all the musicians and technical crew were women and how a premium was put on everyone’s well-being throughout the long tour. Yes! We need more initiatives like this. If it were the other way round, and everyone was a man, no one would have blinked, because that is par of the course. We need to reach the point, where the opposite will also be true.
The album’s advertising and music videos have a strong visual identity where Karin appears always with the same specially commissioned and quite spooky latex mask, continuing her tradition of not showing her face, and costume that is an uneasy mix of the infantilising and fetishistic girly baby doll with latex bdsm details. Similarly the tour has a strong visual identity that remains integral throughout. All her co-musicians were also invited to choose visually strong costumes which they wore consistently through the tour and on the promo material. This augmented the hyper-real almost cartoonish aesthetic I believed she was aiming for with her album and tour. It also turned each musician into an avatar or archetype. And I’m sure gave them an extra sense of freedom and lack of self-consciousness on stage.
Joining her were two back-up singers/dancers, two amazing percussionists and a keyboard player, which is already a pretty rich line-up for a electronic dance music. The Knife only toured as two people if I remember correctly.
The concert itself was electric and amazing! I was pretty close to the front, in what would have been a mosh pit for a typical indie boy’s band, but here – because of the music and because of the large amount of women – was a fun dance party. The band put on a great show, was funny, poignant, outspoken.
And the songs were not exactly like on the album! This is a strong point for me. I know a lot of people like to hear the songs they know and love, exactly how they are used to hearing them. But, they way I see it, if that’s what you want, you would be best served playing your music in your living room, on a high quality sound system while sitting comfortably on your sofa. If I am going to pay money and go into the trouble of going to a possibly out of the way venue to stand for long hours in an uncomfortably tight crowd of strangers and then have to find my way home late at night, I want a unique experience that I cannot replicate in the comfort of my own house.
And Fever Ray’s concert delivered this. For starters, she had two percussionists. That is a lot more percussion than features on the majority of her music, which is mainly vibrant electronic soundscapes and vocals. And one of the was an amazing latin percussionist, complete with traditional large bongo drums and all the rest you need for the proper samba sound. Now, I’m not a big fan of latin music, and samba is one of my least favourite types of music. Which means the extra percussion and the latin drum beat that was overlayed over all the songs, initially put me off and I took quite a while to thaw to it. And I never quite got behind it on her older songs, finding that it went with her newer ones better.
However, I appreciated the initiative, and loved that I got the chance to hear her music played in such a different way. Plus, I don’t think it was a bad choice, she was just choosing to mix two different types of dance music in quite a good way. I did see how the latin drums added a nice extra bit of complexity and fun to her songs, and the rest of the crowd loved it. It is just my personal taste issue that I can’t get behind latin music. But even I could tell how good the drummer was!
Fever Ray’s concert was definitely one of my favourite concerts of the year. I rode it’s high for at least a week afterwards and I would see her again for sure.
pandora pavlides 