Radical Romantics by Fever Ray

Welcome to the Top 10 albums of 2023. This is where things really get fun for me, thinking about the albums from the year that I had the most trouble putting down, and what they mean to me and place they occupy in my life.

Fever Ray is the moniker under which Karin Dreijer – half of the groundbreaking electronic duo The Knife – performs, and seeing them appear here in 2023 should not be any surprise. The Knife’s Shaking the Habitual was #29 back in 2013, and both of Dreijer’s earlier Fever Ray releases have appeared on the Top 31 (#18 in 2009 and #21 in 2017). I am always picking up what they’re laying down.

Dreijer, and their nom de plume, Fever Ray, are unlike anything else I currently listen to. In my younger, gothier days I’d cycle through The Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie, and the like, and while all of those bands had a particular look to them – liked to wear dark makeup and do funny things with their hair – I would never have said any of them were “in costume.” My days-away from 50-year-old wants to call Fever Ray “goth,” but there’s something more to it. Dreijer and their Fever Ray bandmates are 100% “in costume,” all the time. On the cover to their phenomenal third album, Radical Romantics, Dreijer has a bald cap on, a ringed mane of long thin white hair, and elaborate makeup that would make them a shoe-in for the Ghost of Christmas Past in a revival of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Radical Romantics is Dreijer’s best album since The Knife’s Silent Shout, which came out back in 2006 (better than the two previous Fever Ray albums, and way better than The Knife’s final album, Shaking the Habitual, from 2013). The additional help Dreijer brought onto Romantics likely has something to do with it. In addition to roping in their brother Olof (aka the other half of The Knife) for four songs, Fever Ray also collaborated with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the Oscar-winning and Grammy-winning duo behind the soundtracks to 2010’s The Social Network and 2013’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (that’s not to mention Reznor’s other gig) on two songs. You can watch videos for both of those Reznor / Ross songs. The first is featured above, called “Even it Out,” and even shows Reznor and Ross performing within. There are some definite Reznor-like sounds flowing through the song. The other is “North,” a more subdued affair, with similar production to the duo’s soundtrack work. Obviously, Dreijer’s work without the help is great, too (the albums wouldn’t appear here on the Top 31 if I didn’t think so). But when 60% of the songs on the album are essentially The Knife songs or tangential Nine Inch Nails songs, there really is no comparison.

You can watch a couple other videos the band has released from the album: “Kandy” and my favorite track from the album, the opener, “What They Call Us.”

I had the immense pleasure of seeing Fever Ray perform live in November, and it was everything I want out of a live show. Theatrics, costumes, dance routines and throbbing bass make for one hell of an experience. Just last week Fever Ray released a live performance video created for ARTE.tv (“the European Culture Channel”) concert series “Passengers,” called Les Hauts Fourneaux d'Uckange (in English, The Blast Furnaces of Uckange) — an hour-long, extremely well-produced film showing the band perform in an abandoned factory in northern France. I encourage you to watch the performance, as it is nearly 1:1 of what I saw back in November, right down to Dreijer’s deathly makeup, their David-Byrne inspired big suit, and the light-up cloud headpiece worn by the keyboardist. Watching them perform, you’ll start to understand what is so magical about Dreijer and the band.

Radical Romantics is eerie, intense, brooding, and it seeps into every one of your orifices like a thick fog. I cannot recommend it highly enough.