- A thrilling live recording that captures the energy and atmosphere of a London concert.
- Much like the tour for Shaking The Habitual, her last album with her brother Olof as The Knife, Karin Dreijer's 2018 Fever Ray tour showed a vision and attention to detail that went well beyond what happened onstage. An article for Red Bull, linked on the band's website, lays it out. Her five-person band were all women, all but one of them over 40, two with children—a rebuke to the music industry's ageism and sexism. The crew was mostly women, too, from the lighting tech to the sound engineer to the bus driver, a move that baffled many of the venues they played. Maryam Nikandish, one of the group's dancers, described the ideals of the performances and the tour itself this way: "The right to your own body... The right to your sexuality, your own gender—being free from the male gaze, the patriarchal structures that oppress sexuality is the one big topic that we have discussed." Lotje Horvers, who managed this tour, as well as Shaking The Habitual, said the vibe was best summed up by a directive, displayed via video screen, the audience received before each show: "Women to the front."
Listening to Live At The Troxy, a recording of Fever Ray's concert in London last March, you might wish you could see the concert as well as hear it—Dreijer's performances have been visually mesmerizing ever since the days of Silent Shout. Still, it's remarkable that a show with such extravagant theatrics—a five-piece band dressed as made up super-heroes, and Dreijer, with shaved head and ghoulish makeup, as their frontwoman—works fine without them. From the chemistry of the band and the sound of Dreijer's voice sans effects, to the whoops of an ecstatic and (at least up front) mostly female crowd, the energy and the atmosphere of the concert is palpable.
The songs, meanwhile, sound fantastic, reimagined for the stage with a raw, kinetic energy that sets them apart from their album versions. In an about-face from the Shaking The Habitual tour, where dozens of dancers moved onstage to mostly pre-recorded music, these shows were completely live. Tracks from Fever Ray's first album are particularly renewed. "I'm Not Done" has a new Italo-ish bassline. "Triangle Walks" has a balmy, syncopated groove. At the end of "Concrete Walls," the group's two drummers compete with a flurry of skittering Amen breaks—a strange and inspired passage that's one of the album's best moments.
The songs from Plunge, though, are the ones that really hit, from rabble-rousers like "To The Moon And Back" and "This Country" to the likes of "Mama's Hand," a haunting reflection on motherhood that closes both albums. It's no surprise the new stuff works so well. In the eight years between her two albums, Dreijer's music transformed on every level—the lyrics, production and the politics underpinning them all crystallized in a new way on Plunge. Live At The Troxy shows how the highly personal world of that album develops further onstage. When Plunge came out, the line that stood out to me most was a dark one: "There's a change in the atmosphere / What we are / Brings the wrong kind of attention here." On Live At The Troxy, I was struck by a different line in the same song: "Staring us / No disrespectful gaze / center of attention / Happy drunk, happy in a safe space."
Tracklist01. An Itch
02. Part Of Us
03. When I Grow Up
04. Mustn't Hurry
05. This Country
06. Falling
07. Wanna Sip
08. I'm Not Done
09. Red Trails
10. Concrete Walls
11. To The Moon And Back
12. Triangle Walks
13. IDK About You
14. Keep The Streets Empty
15. If I Had A Heart
16. Mama's Hand