Fever Ray

• Genre: Leftfield/IDM

About

After the Knife released Silent Shout in 2006, Olof Dreijer intimated that it'd be another five years before the brother-sister duo sliced its way through the studio again. Maybe so, but sister Karin Dreijer Andersson apparently had plans of her own. Not three years later, she returned as Fever Ray, a solo project featuring co-production from Swedish electronica producer Christoffer Berg. What might be most surprising about the project is how closely it recalls Silent Shout: Olof, an avowed fan of minimal techno and ominous electro, was credited with the Knife's eerie electronic sound, but Fever Ray's debut sounds uncannily like the duo's dark, delirious swoon. The arpeggiated trance passages are gone, and Karin doesn't rely as heavily on spooky vocal effects. But on the blasted Americana of "If I Had a Heart" and "Dry and Dusty," she still uses pitch-shifting to sound less (or more) than human. Even when she foregoes electronic processing, she still comes across like a kohl-eyed banshee blown into our world on the winds of the apocalypse. Cryptic, spirited and not a little terrifying, Fever Ray confirms Andersson as an unusually compelling voice, as surprising as she is consistent.

- Philip Sherburne