Fever Ray
Plunge
(MUTE)
Fever Ray’s Plunge allows listeners to dive deep into Karin Dreijer’s sonic curiosities. The album starts of with “Wanna Sip.” Here Dreijer’s lyrics and struggle are loud and clear, “I wanna love you, but you’re not making it easy/ I wanna love you, but it’s not easy.” At the chorus the track spirals downward with electronic space sounding effects, and a strong, simple, singular beat.
Things abruptly quiet and slow down for a bit on the following track, “Mustn’t Hurry,” but it soon evolves into something a little more hard hitting. The steady pace and dramatic synths of “Falling” also create a similar effect.
“IDK About You” really stands out with its quick tempo and somewhat intricate rhythmic intro, which drops for a moment to highlight the emotion and barren confusion in Dreijer’s lyrics, “Let’s meet up when the time is right, but I don’t know about you/ Let’s find out what you are about.” In this brief moment her vocals sound a bit like Bjork, unafraid, bare, and emotive. Lyrically the song progresses and ascends over dramatic and ever changing instrumentals, but always returns to the same fast, grounded beat leading us to a danceable outro.
“This Country” brings us back to the strange, cavernous, and intriguingly electronic. This track is industrial and filled with lyrics about the current political climate and sexual freedom.
The title track is reminiscent of The Knife’s (Karin Dreijer’s musical duo with brother Olof Dreijer) earlier work. It’s a fast, clicky, and experimental, clocking in at 5:37.
Fever Ray’s Plunge is just as strange and striking as its creepy, crackled, slightly gruesome cover art. Plunge is a great mixture of The Knife, and Dreijer’s debut solo (self-titled) album, which was released back in 2009. Fans new and old will find it easy to become immersed in this strong album.
