Music
The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson Finds
a Voice of Her Own as Fever Ray
In an airport, between promotional engagements, Karin
Dreijer Andersson tells me about her solo project Fever Ray.
She knows I’m not the only one listening.
Anderson’s voice has garnered a lot of attention over the last
few years as the manic shrill drone Jekyll and Hyde vocalist
of the Swedish brother-and-sister duo The Knife. Fever Ray
(Mute: 2009), her eponymous solo debut, is Andersson’s
first venture back into the public eye since the pair’s hiatus
in 2007.
After each question, she opens her mouth and exhales a
breath of dry air before answering. Even routine questions
get a moment of reflective silence. Why make a solo record?
“I thought it was important for me to find out if I could make
music on my own.”
Fever Ray is Andersson’s most self-conscious record to
date, and it reverberates with the fear that if it wasn’t for a
slick pop song (“Heartbeats”) from The Knife’s second record
Deep Cuts, their creepy, restrained follow-up album Silent
Shout, for all its subtle brilliance, might have gone altogether
unnoticed.
Fever Ray isn’t just a solo project; it’s a solitary effort. It’s
a search for the emotional center of that searing, captivating
voice that drove Silent Shout (Mute: 2006). Andersson did
all of the writing and most of the recording for Fever Ray by
herself and it teems with introspection. She crafts dreamlike
landscapes that flow from remembrance and recent experi-
ences. It’s sad music. “I don’t feel the need to make music
when I’m happy,” she tells me. There’s hope for revelation
buried in the artistic and personal exhaustion of having a
second child and being one half of The Knife. “I haven’t slept
very much over the last couple years,” she confesses. “It’s
definitely influenced me.”
76  march 2009  soma
On Fever Ray, Andersson sends the isolated grown-up
with a personality disorder of Silent Shout to therapy, using
music to analyze everything from her childhood experiences
(“Seven”) to the spiritual minutiae of interpersonal relation-
ships (“Dry and Dusty”). “The vocals are different kinds of
mental characters I like to work with,” she says. “They are
different kinds of emotions.” On Fever Ray, she further hones
the personalities in her vocals. Computer processors become
less a form of real-life reflection, revealing the moody dualities
of a droning, pained interior and a cheeky, innocent exterior.
As Andersson dives further into her subconscious, the
moments of musical epiphany are fewer, and they’re marked
by melancholy and awe. “We sampled my guitar and chopped
it up to create many of the sounds,” she explains. “The music
has a much more organic feel.” The production on Fever
Ray reads more like a surrealist landscape than the sculpted
rhythmic narratives of Silent Shout. “I tried to find a tempo
that suited my ideas,” says Andersson. “It’s like a slow-motion
state, and it’s a little bit thicker.” The music has more
emotional weight and body—persistent percussion behind
slow-tempo synthesizer hums are lathed by gloomy vocals; the
ethereal effect produced contrasts with playful melodies which
sway in and out of the foreground.
Fever Ray begins with the first single “If I Had A Heart”—a
brooding, moribund study that finishes with a sense of
uncertainty, or a discomfiture with what is. The refrain says
it all: “Give me more, give me more.” Despite every reason to
be content, Karin Dreijer Andersson wants more. “I’m always
looking forward,” she says. “The big thing for us is trying
something new, experimenting, and seeing what happens when
you make things up.”
Text Mario Aguilar Photography Elin Berge
 Music

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