Day 88: Fever Ray — Plunge
Eight years is a long time between albums for most, but Karen Dreijer can get away with it. As one half of now-legendary Swedish brother and sister electronic duo The Knife, her discography is a testament to the idea that less is more. Her working pace can seem as glacial as the songs that made up her debut album as Fever Ray, but every release finds Dreijer making music that latches onto your mind and gets under your skin. And despite the uncharacteristic “surprise” release of 2017’s Plunge, her second Fever Ray album, Dreijer’s reputation for not half-assing anything she does remains intact.
For fans who have been waiting eight years for more songs like “When I Grow Up” and “Seven”, it’ll take at least a listen or two to catch up with Dreijer’s more frantic approach. It’s a far more active affair than her much-celebrated solo debut, with songs like “IDK About You” and lead single “To the Moon and Back” feeling downright frantic by comparison. With so many more fitting into the same amount of musical space, much of Plunge subsequently feels claustrophobic. It’s also a more abrasive work, offering little quarter to those who fell in love with Dreijer’s lush songs about watering her friend’s plants last time around.
Though it might come off as more of a conventionally challenging listen, Plunge is also more immediate and expressive. Dreijer’s vocals play a larger role in shaping the mood within Within the confines of her less spacious production style, conveying everything from desire to disgust. Her already highly-processed vocals sound even less human than normal, more like a chorus of aliens sent to sing here on earth until our existing order breaks down.
That idea is furthered by Plunge’s lyrics, which ditch Fever Ray’s storytelling and memoir for an analysis of the politics of pleasure. These songs deal with lust, love, and the limits that society . “Falling” seems to tackle the concept of queer shame, while “This Country” rails against the puritanical approach to familial structures and sexual health. “This country makes it hard to fuck,” is Dreijer’s rallying cry, an only slightly more blunt aphorism than what you might’ve seen on a women’s march sign supporting Planned Parenthood. While she doesn’t entirely ditch abstraction, there’s a new frankness to even the more apolitical songs. They make it clear that Dreijer wants us to shake off our habitual ways of understanding the interpersonal, laying out a message of greater female agency over songs that intentionally divorce that concept from outdated ideas of beauty.
That she’s able to make outlandish, off-kilter music with melodic elements that sometimes seem only tangentially related to each other and make it work is a testament to Dreijer’s craftsmanship and clarity of vision. Plunge is one of the most wilfully eccentric effort and singularly creative projects of the year this side of Bjork, and Dreijer is a (figurative) drummer who makes some of the weirdest possible beats to march to. Even if it isn’t your thing, you have to respect the audacity it takes to create something like this (mostly) by yourself.
This is Day 88 in my 100 albums in 100 days series, where I review a new album or EP I haven’t heard in full before every day through December 31st. Check out yesterday’s post or see the full archives for more
