To The Moon & Back is the first single released from Fever Ray's second album Plunge. It's been a long wait. Many wondered whether Karin Dreijer Andersson's eponymous debut album in 2009 was indeed just a one off experiment. All the elements in that outstanding debut remain in the new album, the desolate sonic landscape, the edgy chill, freakishness, alienated tenderness, lyrically explicit, and bearing all with an honest queerness.
Circumstances have changed for Dreijer. In 2009 she was married with two children, the sense of isolation from the rest of the world, from living in a nuclear family, and motherhood in particular, suffused the atmosphere of that album with a snowbound sombre loneliness. By 2017 she's definitely gone non-nuclear, now divorced, the sexual politics that scorched through the final album from The Knife ~ Shaking The Habitual, reappears here in a more personal guise.
The sound remains indie-electro, but this time it's edge is as hard as nails, the background tone is no longer a melancholic drone. It has a drive that is rawer and sounds actively assertive, thrusting its oddity and experimentation defiantly out and at you. So, at the end of To The Moon & Back, she does indeed sing 'I want to put my finger up your pussy'. Its what puts the words 'explicit' in brackets by the side of her album.
In many ways the new album carries on musically from where the final The Knife album left off. Rhythmically and structurally complex, Dreijer rarely resorts to a lazy pop cliche, unless for reasons of twisted parody. She appears still to be inordinately fond of vaguely Oriental sounding tune riffs, that first appeared on We Share Our Mother's Health, from the Silent Shout album. Fever Ray maintains The Knife tradition of producing visually discomforting pop videos. They rarely appeared as themselves, and if they did they were usually wearing masks. Subverting the conventions of the pop video by staging complete unknowns miming to their songs.
For Fever Ray the visuals here are much more vivid, lurid and garish, this video has the aesthetic of some trashy lesbian schlock horror movie trailer. Dreijer as Fever Ray, conceals herself now, not behind other people, but behind heavy dramatic face make up, if indeed this is really her, it is hard to know. In terms of how far out there she's prepared to go, this is definitely out there on the fringes of the land of Bjork. Watch the video, but be warned its not holy water she's being anointed with.
Oh, whilst it is all the above, its also damned catchy too.
Circumstances have changed for Dreijer. In 2009 she was married with two children, the sense of isolation from the rest of the world, from living in a nuclear family, and motherhood in particular, suffused the atmosphere of that album with a snowbound sombre loneliness. By 2017 she's definitely gone non-nuclear, now divorced, the sexual politics that scorched through the final album from The Knife ~ Shaking The Habitual, reappears here in a more personal guise.
The sound remains indie-electro, but this time it's edge is as hard as nails, the background tone is no longer a melancholic drone. It has a drive that is rawer and sounds actively assertive, thrusting its oddity and experimentation defiantly out and at you. So, at the end of To The Moon & Back, she does indeed sing 'I want to put my finger up your pussy'. Its what puts the words 'explicit' in brackets by the side of her album.
In many ways the new album carries on musically from where the final The Knife album left off. Rhythmically and structurally complex, Dreijer rarely resorts to a lazy pop cliche, unless for reasons of twisted parody. She appears still to be inordinately fond of vaguely Oriental sounding tune riffs, that first appeared on We Share Our Mother's Health, from the Silent Shout album. Fever Ray maintains The Knife tradition of producing visually discomforting pop videos. They rarely appeared as themselves, and if they did they were usually wearing masks. Subverting the conventions of the pop video by staging complete unknowns miming to their songs.
For Fever Ray the visuals here are much more vivid, lurid and garish, this video has the aesthetic of some trashy lesbian schlock horror movie trailer. Dreijer as Fever Ray, conceals herself now, not behind other people, but behind heavy dramatic face make up, if indeed this is really her, it is hard to know. In terms of how far out there she's prepared to go, this is definitely out there on the fringes of the land of Bjork. Watch the video, but be warned its not holy water she's being anointed with.
Oh, whilst it is all the above, its also damned catchy too.
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