Roxette: live in Melbourne, 2012

Venue: Rod Laver Arena

Date: 18/02/2012

Swedish duo Roxette have endured as a pretty successful band for around 25 years, both here and around the world. However, somewhere along the line, attention to them waned in Australia, whose love for the band’s edgy pop/rock songs was unrelenting early on, evidenced by a string of top 40 hits between 1989 and 1993. The latest album, Charm School was released last year but with little local fanfare - just as the bulk of contemporary Roxette albums - so a ‘90s-heavy setlist is in order for the Swede’s first Aussie show in 17 years.

The songs selected for their current tour offered both an interesting peek into Roxette’s idea of what would best appease their Australian audiences, and what they themselves feel works best live. These two notions work to varying degrees of success in what is a tremendously fun, yet occasionally flawed concert. Considerable time is given to 1991 album, Joyride for example, which errs on the side of ‘too much’, while breakthrough set, Look Sharp is under-represented in a way. Later releases, Have A Nice Day and Room Service are all but forgotten, but the general polite applause offered to anything post 1994 possibly scared the band out of getting too clever with the set list. After all, the last time Roxette moved mass units here, it was in the form of cassingles sales – so naturally they drew a full crowd of fans who see them as more a nostalgia act. Energetic guitarist/songwriter, Per Gessle – looking in exquisite shape for his age – accepts this fact; “We’re going to play a few songs off our new album Charm School…. (muted response) but mostly we’re gonna be playing all your favourite Roxette classics!” (thunderous applause.) 

Perhaps Roxette are a nostalgia act in terms of ‘when they had hits’, but you can hardly call their later material a weak by comparison. 2011 single, She’s Got Nothing On (But The Radio) is pure pop heaven, showing only the tiniest shift to what we might call an ‘updated sound’ for a band who never really change what they do, and hey why would they… the formula works. Aside from the songs, the band is also highly functional – most are the original touring line-up from the early days - and it shows in their polished precision. For many here tonight though, it’s all about that platinum blonde chick with the incredible voice that so many mistakenly referred to as Roxette herself; Marie Fredriksson. In concert Marie, is all about poise and delivery. She can do intimate, she can do subtle, she can soar and she can even roar, when required. Even still, the plucky white-funk of Dressed For Success, proves to be a bastard to sing. Marie is at an age where her vocal range is gradually lowering therefore, the songs she sang as a 20 year-old are not going to be resplendent with the all up-and-down-the-scale glory.



These changes to familiar songs are at first jarring but over the course of the show, that slightly rougher vocal style becomes enchanting. Several times, as if to highlight Fredricksson’s deeper register, the band bow out and allow her to sing accapella for a few bars and it never fails to impress. A run of back-to-back power ballads gives Marie further chance to shine but Roxette are always a greater option when she and Gessle duet. How Do You Do!, Joyride and Dangerous lift the roof with the power of their combined voices and you wonder why they don’t just make ‘em all like that. Marie’s own It Must Have Been Love - which gets a wordy introduction as the song that ‘paved their way to Hollywood’ – suddenly makes perfect sense in an arena-proportioned building. Then just as the pleasant, uplifting vibrations seem to be in unending quantities, the pre-encore exodus is upon us - and I do mean exodus. For a hundred or so fans, the best bits have already been and gone, so either they’ve never been to a concert before or the babysitter’s about to start earning overtime. Us left behind are dealt an almost wonderful Listen To Your Heart, which sadly never quite gets off the ground and a bizarre Church Of Your Heart, which just sounds a bit too Sunday school sing-a-long church-y weirdness. Still, it feels wrong picking fault with Roxette, especially after a barn-storming, The Look which concluded the main set. Basically, we were witness to one of the finest bands in their field, especially when you consider many of the subsequent rubbish acts representing the Europop scene. Even if their time is past, Roxette remind us of a really a fantastic time in pop music which is worth remembering, revisiting and even relishing.



lEIGh5

ROD LAVER SET-LIST, 18/02/12

Dressed For Success

Sleeping In My Car

The Big L

I Wish I Could Fly

Only When I Dream

She's Got Nothing On (But The Radio)

Perfect Day

Things Will Never Be The Same

It Must Have Been Love

7Twenty7

Fading Like A Flower

Crash! Boom! Bang!

How Do You Do

Dangerous

Joyride

Watercolours In The Rain

Spending My Time

The Look

encore:

Listen To Your Heart

Church Of Your Heart

First Aid Kit interview (2010)

PREPARED TO HEAL

With a family in full support of their career and an endorsement from Fever Ray's Karin, Stockholm's First Aid Kit are primed to break-through - minus the hype usually reserved for adolescent musical acts. Sisters Klara and Johanna Soderberg after learning the basics of music from their manager father, developed their own somber anti-folk catalogue. One viral video and an EP (Drunken Trees) in the bag, along with comparisons to Coco Rosie pointed sharply towards a very bright future.



Following their debut album - The Big Black & The Blue – global tour plans, including Australia, were underway. Exciting yes, but elder sister by two years Johanna's just happy to be anywhere outside of Europe. "I haven't heard anything about Australia so I'm excited to check it out." Johanna beams, "We just did a tour of the US and although we played to a lot of people who didn't know us, it went really well. I think they loved it more than European audiences in fact." Johanna exclaims, "European's are a lot more reserved and so it is harder to know if they are really into you." She claims, "But the US was the best, man. We're kind of obsessed with American culture and to play there was a dream come true. But who knows maybe when we come to Australia we will get obsessed with that and it will be even better than America."

Before 2007's debut EP, the sisters had long been practicing harmonies for fun resulting in an eerie a-likeness to their voices. "We'd go round the house singing together all the time, so I suppose subconsciously we have adapted to each others voices." Johanna offers. "Klara started writing the songs, but I would do harmonies with her and work out the melodies and that's how we always write now." Initially First Aid Kit's exposure was entirely internet-based and following a filmed performance of Fleet Foxes' Tiger Mountain Peasant Song. "After that, we put some demos up on MySpace, and a lot of offers started coming through from record labels wanting to sign us."

Karin Dreijer-Andersson (The Knife/Fever Ray), made contact with the girls through their mother who met while dropping their respective kids off at school. Karin's own label Rabid soon became First Aid Kit's home. "We were big fans of Karin's work so it was a really big deal for us when she asked us to be on her label." Johanna explains, "She let us do everything the way we wanted to, and I don't think any other label would allow new acts like us have complete control over our music. Also Karin gave us a lot of advice on the business side of it, because we were being offered a lot of deals. She's become our mentor and role model over the last couple of years because she does everything on her own terms and is a very strong woman."

 

Along with Karin, Klara and Johanna's immediate family have taken an active role in helping the girls maintain their burgeoning music career. "Our father comes on tour with us as a tour manager and sound engineer, our mother works from home answering e-mails that kind of thing. Plus our brother, whose six years old, plays drums but he's only learning so he won't be touring with us obviously," she laughs. So everyone in my family is really involved with First Aid Kit, and we wouldn't be where we are without their support."



The delicate music First Aid Kit play points toward a harmonious union, perhaps unlike many siblings share and Johanna's keen to enforce there's no cattiness with these sisters. "We never fight at all really because I think we kind of see things the same way." She confirms. "Maybe we might disagree over songs or songwriting - sometimes if we don't know where the songs are going, we might fight about what direction to take them in, you know, but we get along fine generally coz I think we trust each others judgment."



lEIGh5

Click to watch:



FIRST AID KIT - In The Morning (video)

Whiplasher Bernadotte (Deathstars) interview

From the often humourless Stockholm metal scene, Deathstars come shining through with their self-styled 'death-glam' sound. (Think of a nod towards KISS, a sideways grimace at Rammstein and a fart in the direction of Front Line Assembly… with glitter.) Since 2000, they have released three hell raising albums and are gearing up to make their first Australian visit, before which I sit down with Andreas "Whiplasher Bernadotte" Bergh (singer and hat wearer) to shine some light on the dark and glammy world of Deathstars.

"Our band is kind of like a circus in hell". Andreas begins with a smile in his deep, accented voice. "I think it's important to entertain and scare the hell out of people at the same time." As a youngster Andreas was fascinated by the look of Kiss and the elaborate staged horror shows of Alice Cooper. He says, "I was very attracted to these kind of theatrical displays that went hand in hand with the music, particularly in the late '70s and early '80s. Bands then wanted to shock their audiences and give them something more than just music." He adds, "I mean Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare live show was so incredibly dark but also very, very funny." Some humour wouldn't go astray in Scandinavian music, so is there room in Deathstars shows for the odd laugh? "Our shows are very dark", He says, dragging out 'dark' to 'daaarrk' as he continues, "We are not really able to have the theatrics because of how many shows we play. We sometimes have to jump straight off the plane and go to a club and start. It's that crazy at times."



Despite the hectic touring, it's a relaxed sounding Whiplasher speaking today; "I'm actually on holiday in Norway enjoying some good coffee and some sun. I'm having a little break before we devastate Australia." There's good humour in his voice as he tells me he has no concept of what to expect from our land or even how the band will be received. "I might get my board shorts on and have a run on the beach." He laughs, "I have only been to the airport in Sydney to catch a connecting flight to New Zealand back before the band when I was a documentary film maker."

Although Andreas has played in bands since he was 13, he sidelined in print journalism and documentaries to feed a few fascinations. "I spent some time with the Maori in Tonga. These guys lived in a deeply religious fishing community and I made a film about their lives, which I think will surprise a few people." It's always good to have something to fall back on, but Andreas sees his time making films as a guide to the use of powerful imagery and maintains an eagle eye over all of the band's promotional output. "I always work together with the photographers and video directors as a way of maintaining consistency in our own style."



The Deathstars 'look' is all five members in white face paint, black hair and military style uniforms with Andreas crowned by a marching band leader's cap. Topping off the look, he half glitters his face and carries a cane leaving no doubt as to who's wearing the pants. "I like to think I am the leader but I am really just a prostitute in this band." He says, giving a low rumbling laugh and the first indicator today of that booming voice heard on the recordings. Our talk turns to the roles of the other members of Deathstars on the album. "We have a very bad democracy in the band". He explains, "I write all of the words and Nightmare Industries (Emil Nödtveidt – producer, guitars and keyboards), who is the dictator, writes all of the music. That is how we have always worked since we were in bands together in our teens. It was also because up until this year we all lived in different countries. Now that we are all living in Sweden, who knows maybe we will write the next album with more input from the other guys."



The album they are touring is Night, Electric Night. Recorded over two years, it is essentially a darker album than its predecessor Termination Bliss (2006). "It is difficult to make happy songs about suicide". Andreas explains, alluding to Via The End, written about Nödtveidt's brothers' death. "Most of what I write about comes from our everyday lives, things that are real and have some sort of impact on us." Does writing come easy to the well tailored frontman? "I am writing all of the time. I enjoy it so much and I never have to really force myself to work on my songs… I am not a lazy songwriter." Andreas is very strict on what goes in and what stays out of his songs. "Nobody gets to see what I write until it is completed, I am happy with it and it is ready to go into the song, and nobody gets to see what I am not happy with." On this point, he sounds deathly certain. I wonder if Andreas happy then with his band being tagged as 'death-glam'? "Of course, and anyway, it is a name we came up with." I suggest you can attach the word 'glam' to just about anything, but what does it mean to him? "I think it tickles a nerve. It makes me think of a time when bands cared about their presentation and had a laid back, sort of chilled attitude."



With their striking image and powerful music, Deathstars have attracted the odd… well, odd fan to their fold, Andreas coolly discloses. "I met this guy in London who had his car all painted up in Deathstars artwork and he had gotten seven tattoos all over his body of us". Enough to either delight or horrify I probe, "Actually I found it very erotic." Another of those guttural laughs escapes Andreas's throat and he ads, "I'm only joking!"























(above) with Skinny Disco

(middle) with Whiplasher Bernadotte





lEIGh5

Deathstars live in Melbourne 2009

venue - Corner Hotel (review)

If you could sum up the atmosphere of this wild night with a simple food analogy, imagine two ten tonne trucks carrying sides of freshly slaughtered beef carcasses crashing in a narrow back alley, exploding and instantly barbequing their contents. A fire truck then comes screaming around the corner, it's occupants emerge wearing steel plated armor and begin spraying the wreckage with hoses that disperse beer instead of water. This scene can be applied not to the Deathstars concert, which is still hours away, but to the streets surrounding the Corner Hotel which are filled with howling, crazed football fans. The desperately cold wind and lack of access to any venue seems to have created pockets of hysteria all around the place. The thought that there's going to be a very loud and fast metal band playing their first Melbourne show right in the middle of this fray is as frightening as it is exciting. I can't get the thought out of my head of someone running with particularly weak plastic bag filled with bricks just waiting for the inevitable tear. My photographer Fruitbat and I put off entering the venue for as long as possible, instead preferring to watch the scene unfolding at the stage door - which is a parade of black haired, black leather-clad gents carrying gear into the venue and us trying to work out who was in a band and who was a roadie. Supporting Deathstars are two new bands from the darker side of music, Familiar and INK who all up including the headliners and roadies equaled something like 20 dudes helping keep the black hair-dye trade afloat. Time to cue up, and oh boy do I feel underdressed. Nearly every fan has turned up in their best and blackest regalia from the standard platform boots and fishnets to, as a couple of girls had, some glowing blue balls woven into their hair.

The first support is Sydney band Familiar who have only been playing together for two months and to my delight, at least, the lead singer is Ashley Rothschild formerly of 90s synth-rockers Caligula. He's funny too making cheeky comments about 'panda-eyes' and general morbidness at Deathstars assembled followers. The band, although sounding a little unrehearsed, make a pretty decent start to the night with their power riffs and big chorus's. However, the second support band INK failed to keep the momentum up started by Familiar. The words 'earnest' and 'Nickelback' were muttered at the back of the room while they played their short set. Strangely, and amusingly the Deathstars current CD starts playing in the intermission while the headliners are getting pumped up backstage. Finally, the curtain parts and five heavily made-up men storm the stage as a chilling pre-recorded synthesised church organ replaces the CD on the PA.



Here are Deathstars; the accessible brand of industrial metal. The album their touring, Night Electric Night, is loaded with all the theatrical gloom references fully owned and paid for by Scandinavian bands. The themes are dark in the same way Batman is with its gothic loaded imagery and style. Sweden's Deathstars cater more to metal fans who love the massively exaggerated posturing and the bizarre clash of macho-campness that Kiss used to specialise in. They don't have a political edge and no matter how 『serious' they might sound on the surface – there's far greater absurdity underneath it all. Frontman, Whiplasher Bernadotte – a composite of a young Alice Cooper and a zombie military band leader - is tailored, uniformed and glittered, his unholy band in similar dress and white face-paint. Despite Bernadotte's commanding presence it's his lanky bass player, Skinny Disco who draws the most attention as he swings his two foot long dreads around and screams his lines into the microphone. His shrill squawks are responses to Whiplashers deep ballsy calls throughout the entire set. It's quite amazing how these guys can maintain their throat-shredding vocals unfailingly for the hour-and-a-half show. On stage it must be around 20 degrees hotter than the room as maintaining the well-tailored look is another matter - after only three songs, Whiplasher's disheveled hair is clinging to his face, he ditches the jacket and hat and has lost most of his glitter. I'll bet by the end of this tour he'll be going on stage in a wife-beater and trackies.



The story going around is that last night's show in Sydney was pretty average, but there's no evidence of sloppiness tonight - in fact it's almost impossible to fault the band at all. Whatever they were selling I wanted to buy it, and the beefy onslaught of (D.E.A.D.) The Mark Of The Gun, Tongues and Night Electric Night were some very tempting offers. The concert is both thrilling unrelenting but somehow the audience manages to remain fairly motionless – except for horns aloft and restrained clap-alongs - in which case Whiplasher's invitation for us to top two fans supposedly fucking in the moshpit at a concert in Madrid is unlikely to happen.

Trying to guess which songs are the fan favourites is impossible as everything receives rapturous cheers of approval, that is until near the end when the one I've really been waiting for, Blitzkrieg causes a near riot. It's now the mega-anthem end of the show and they unleash 『popular' singles Cyanide, Death Dies Hard and Revolution Exodus all in a row. It's taken most of the night but finally the room temperature has reached sauna level. Goths simply do not generate body heat. Whiplasher is stalking the stage drenched in sweat saying; 「Melbourne, you have a very strange climate!」



Depending on what you like to get out of a concert - Deathstars succeed absolutely as a live band. Personally, I like my shocking attention span catered for, eye bulging excitement from go to whoa, loads of visual stimulus and a sing-a-long part. They ticked all of my boxes tonight, plus if I ever find myself under a full moon in a frosty Northern European graveyard, Deathstars would be the only possible soundtrack.



lEIGh5



CORNER HOTEL SET LIST:

Night Electric Night

Motherzone

Semi-Automatic

Mark Of The Gun

Tongues

Last Ammunition

Fuel Ignites

New Dead Nation

Trinity Fields

Chertograd

Blitzkrieg

Blood Stains Blondes

Cyanide

Death Dies Hard

Revolution Exodus





Photos by me and Mary Boukouvalas

Fever Ray album review (2009) (unpublished)

FEVER RAY



Sometimes, amazingly, hype is actually not misplaced. In the case of Sweden's The Knife it almost defies belief that their last album Silent Shout (2007), a dark and uneasy listening venture, in contrast with so much dumbed-down over-hyped music, had became so widely applauded. The brother-sister duo made no attempt to follow up the multi-Swedish Grammy winning album, but instead retreated from the spotlight in a desire for anonymity. Vocalist Karin Dreijer was about to expand her family, and so decided that The Knife, for the time being, should retire. Stepping away from her brother and creative partner Olof, Karin discovered a new freedom to work without the boundaries automatically imposed by a split input. Post-natal, she found herself working tirelessly on what would become Fever Ray, writing in an often exhausted state between nappy changes, bedtime stories and bottle feeding. This situation, unique to new mothers, resparked Dreijer's creative drive into overload. All through this mainly solo effort, we are witness to the most powerful extremes of a writer pushing themselves to be entirely selfless while still absorbed in, and open to, their subconsciousness.



The haunting If I Had A Heart begins with an ominous mechanical humming reminiscent of German industrial noise makers Einsturzende Neubauten. It's quite a misleading introduction, but does set up the theme of vocal manipulation integral to the many moods weaving throughout the ten tracks here. If I Had A Heart starts out sung slinky and soft, artificially transposed to just below a natural human voice pitch, then soaring in a yearning, child-like soprano, highlighting Karin's arresting accent. Occasionally there are multiple Karins singing the same lyric all in different pitches, then layered to give a contrasting warmth when the music reaches its sometimes icy depths. In places it is evocative of glaciers and frozen lakes, the severe north Scandinavian weather garnering more than one mention. There are many and varied topics at the heart of the songs, but Karin writes mainly in an interpretive, sketchy manner. Much of what is said is second to how it's delivered. On I'm Not Done for example, Karin's vocal is down unusually low in the mix. The effect is of a voice drowning in the music's stormy waves, yet still determined to be heard until the final breath. As one of the most impacting tracks here, its heavy tribal conga drumming and amplified echoing finger clicks draw in the listener, forcing them not to ignore that fading voice in amongst the din. On most of the rest of the album, there is little urgency in Karin's delivery. She likes to stretch all her notes and often lets the instrumentation take over for several bars, when suddenly her unaltered natural voice reappears in response to a dark menacing robotic one. This gives the effect of a parent reading a story book to a child and doing the different character's voices – the creepy voice for the villain and the sweet spoken voice of the heroine. Karin, as the mother of two young children, perhaps has subliminally taken her role as the storytelling villain/heroine into the studio.



The album's first single, When I Grow Up, is lyrically a playful look at an untainted child's view of life's endless possibilities, and yet avoids sounding remotely sugary or schmaltzy. From first listen, Triangle Walks’ gorgeous Eastern strings and enchanting whistled melody will attach to your brain and sit in your ear until you're humming it over and over. Seven thrives on a cyclic, sexy looped beat awash with an eerie wind sound effect and gloopy synth line. It’s a wonderfully uplifting moment and brings an expertly placed mood shift to the proceedings. On the pulsing Concrete Walls, Karin experiments to the extremes of the voice-tone enhancer, creating a gloomy unsettling atmosphere echoing The Dreaming era Kate Bush. The contrast of a gentler sound and crystal-clear singing on Keep The Streets Empty For Me is sublime. This desolate hymn finely embodies the sweet feeling of an exhausted, relaxed state. Dry & Dusty is melodically perfect. It exists in a world beyond clunky design, effortlessly speaking from the subconscious. The album closer, the epic Coconut, is the hot spring in a freezing lake evoking some of Joy Division’s most shimmeringly beautiful moments. Portishead came close to this sound on their last release (on which The Knife's influence can be heard all over) but Fever Ray have nailed it.



This album will be enough to send many a worthwhile electronic act back to their studios with hands-in-the-air frustration at their own shortcomings. Fever Ray is the sound of an artist with a finely tuned skill in drawing on previous experience, while remaining full of fresh discovery. Dreijer sounds so focused and precise in her ambition to present otherworldly music, imbibing her interest in film noir. This breathtaking work will not only satisfy fans of The Knife, but also show that Karin is a powerfully unique talent, perhaps even more so than The Knife’s combined strength.





I'm calling it album of 2009... What I love about Karin is she puts so much love and care into her music. She doesn't just serve up any old shit and hope it sells enough copies to pay for itself!





Fever Ray review links (official website)

Fever Ray article (unpublished)

From The Knife to Fever Ray - the story of 

Karin Dreijer-Andersson.

Electronic music received a soulful boost at the start of the naughties by quiet and consistent achievers, The Knife. Where as Daft Punk and their peers before presented music with the emphasis on the machine and the synthetic, Sweden's The Knife, had the far greater ambition of adding a brain, a voice and broad palate of subject matter. Everything from references to their Nordic heritage to bulimia is sung over tracks carved with laser precision. Their unblemished musical legacy is set to continue with a new solo project for vocalist Karin Dreijer called Fever Ray. In the meantime, let's take a look back at the origins of this unique and unconventional duo, a brother and sister who created their own little world with the soundtrack as the beating heart.



PRIMITIVE BEASTS

In the beginning, two monkeys isolated themselves in a tiny cabin in the Stockholm wilderness with the intention of creating music completely uninfluenced by the outside world. They surrounded themselves with instruments both organic and electronic. There they stayed, learning the instruments and perfecting a sound all of their own. The boy monkey was named Olof and the girl was Karin. They were siblings who thrived in their isolation, only ever speaking in telepathy about their music. The sound of which was becoming stronger and more powerful than any words could hope to be. The monkeys lost all concept of passing time. How long had they been in that cabin making music? Neither one showed signs of having aged. Then one day a stranger arrived at the cabin. The stranger, a rabbit, was drawn to the sounds coming from within. So disillusioned with the music of the world, he cried uncontrollable tears of joy upon hearing the two monkeys' work. The monkeys introduced themselves. 'We are The Knife, we have been waiting for you".



The story of The Knife is one shrouded in fairytale mystery. Rabbits with heightened music appreciation is just the start. The reality is you can probably google their back story and find where Karin and Olof Dreijer were musically trained, how they got signed etc... However, listening to their music is an invitation into a very vivid world created entirely as an alternate reality. In The Knife's dimension, one foot must always stay in grim reality, while the other may wander into deep waters occupied by half-human beasties. Juxtapositions are important to The Knife as they present clear relate-able situations in the songs, but told by an alien observer. As with fairytales, which often use very human situations as their base and build around that using strange creatures as the storytellers. When Alice followed the white rabbit down the hole, it was the beginning of the journey we all go on. The journey called growing up. Lewis Carroll's story would hardly have become a classic, had it been told as a straight forward adolescent angst tale which is where The Knife come in.



Karin and Olof cast themselves as Wizards behind the curtain, allowing the image of two grinning monkeys to tell their stories from a fantastic and escapist angle, freed from limited realistic impositions. It may also have been a cheeky statement on how every chimp with a keyboard now is making 'arty experimental' (i.e. boring as shit) records. The rabbit, in the story of The Knife represents us, the eager listener in theory going to despair over the radio's terrible music constantly pouring into our ears. The rabbit is overcome by hearing them, and any music lover can relate to that first discovery of a band so amazing that it makes any music heard before seem like bad noise. The Knife confess that like many of us do, that they enjoy tacky pop songs and big 80s ballads as a way to relax after intense studio sessions. They even released a grand homage to Berlin's anthemic Take My Breath Away, a song which Karin would blast repeatedly on her car stereo while driving around trying to cure a bout of writer's block. Effectively that song's edgy but sweet simplicity was the contrast needed to push Dreijer out of her mindset. As a songwriter, she understands that to access her muse she sometimes has to sort through its cluttered room, allowing herself to get distracted along the way.



So what is it about The Knife's own music that prompts them to seek escape through somewhat bland pop songs? There is often many fine layers of dark underplayed synth bleeps and squeaks, clean razor-sharp beats, strings, echo effects and possibly The Knife's defining sound - their love of the steel drum. A wonderful contrast is at work when you hear this most tropical of instruments coupled with Karin's frighteningly low pitched affected vocals, and Olof's bleak synthesised strings. What observations are these monkey's are making that leave them needing a little 『dirty pop' to cool down after? Their second album Deep Cuts (2004) includes Pass This On, which deals with the possible subject of teacher/student sexual relationships. This is a good example of the Dreijers' interest in some bizarre and confronting topics. They do not however, wallow in macabre stories but simply walk through their landscapes, uncriticizing. As further proof of their detached attitude to the dark subject matter in Pass This On, the video humorously captures Olof in full drag miming to his sisters vocal while Karin hides amongst a crowd of solemn observers, seething and giving him the evil eye. Those monkeys weren't about taking themselves seriously, but the evolution wheel turned and the previously detached primates were soon to find themselves no longer simple observers but participants in the human experience deeper than they could have imagined.



The Knife had officially embraced their new found popularity and revealed to their increasing audience, a new evolutionary phase - two black winged bird-like creatures, who instead of isolating themselves from the world, took to the sky with their further evolved sound pouring out of their bodies for all to hear. The reality of Karin and Olof's mother passing away during the making of their triumphant third album Silent Shout (2007), caused the duo to focus on previously untouched, personal subject matter. On the frantic and gripping We Share Our Mother's Health these wounded birds mourn of losing the link to their ancestors through a parental death. The exploration of more relatable themes continued on the title track Silent Shout which had Karin and Olof immersing themselves into the world of adolescent fears and self-doubt. The topic of sex, the song claims, suffers from purposefully negative miseducation in Stockholm schools, designed to deter youths from experimenting. Hence the issue becomes one of paranoia at a vital stage in maturing. The Knife fairytale was by now a rather serious and even grim one, and coming close to chapter's end. They had evolved super fast and perhaps their ambitious 'flying beasts' weren't as sustainable as the curious grinning monkeys had been? Reality once again intrudes in The Knife's story and we find out that they simply grew tired of working together... for now at least. They wrapped up the first decade as The Knife with a brief series of incredible live showcases (appearing in concert as their primate alter-egos) before stepping back from the accolades and expectations to vanish for a while.



FEVER ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT

Karin decided to take one year off after having a baby (her second) but instead found herself writing constantly. That creative outpouring was the birth of a project called Fever Ray. The new mother found herself working throughout the night, sleep loss fueling the dream like quality of the new work. Dreijer embraced half-consciousness, allowing it to lead her through the creative process. There was no longer a need for story weaving beyond the songs. The topics were not detached observations but enveloping, sparse daydreams. Working this way meant that Karin could be more evocative lyrically without spelling out every detail for the listener. We could interpret these pieces how we wanted based on an overall feeling. The presentation of The Knife as evolving, non-human entities was a way of delivering music not restricted by flesh and blood limitations. In Fever Ray, Karin has maintained that lack of restriction by playing the ghostly chameleon speaking in the language of dreams. This latest evolution as a spirit between worlds, only accessible during sleep has afforded Dreijer greater freedom than ever before to present herself as the humble conductor of music rather than the physical creator. Though inevitably, the predominant factor in her waking life, her two young children, does emerge in the music. In new track, If I Had A Heart, Karin tells of their behaviour and constant questioning, from a first person account; "My feet dangle from the window frame/will they ever reach the floor?" On The Knife track Marble House (2007), Karin reversed this plot and played the mother, scared of failing the fragile life in her care; "I cut your nails and comb your hair/I carry you down the stairs/on the inside of this marble house". The previous over-protector becomes the happy observer full of childish wonder. Whether the Fever Ray project is a one off or not, is unknown. Karin Dreijer has a restlessness fascination with pushing herself musically to extremes, and how that will manifest next is impossible to say. In the meantime, an album bursting with ideas and originality has emerged. In its creators own words, "When you work with music, you have the possibility to create magic.」 That possibility is realised on Fever Ray.



lEIGh5

Click here to check out Fever Ray's official site.