Karin Dreijer’s many voices carve open a world beneath the world. Across their work with the haunted synth-pop band the Knife and their solo output as Fever Ray, they’ve honed performances that unsettle the usual station of the voice in electronic music. Instead of striving to be a crystalline adornment draped across the beat’s main event, their vocals dart and weave through thickets of bellowing bass. On a Fever Ray song, voices and their ominous accompaniments don’t cleave neatly: You can’t tease them out into substance and tinsel.
On a given track, Dreijer might shimmy up into a shrill falsetto, then belly-flop into a mournful howl. They relish vocal textures that mainstream producers tend to discard as too awkward or unvarnished, knitting together takes into bristling harmonies that sound less like a single human performer and more like a swarm of chimeras circling with their teeth bared and tongues flickering. What they do with their voice traces a maze down into pulsating emotionality, all the hard stuff we’d maybe rather sweep aside but shouldn’t, all the fun and the sex and the humiliation and pain of being alive, here, with others.
One day in January, we talk over Zoom between my house near Denver, where a blue winter light limps through the windows, and their studio outside of Stockholm, where it’s already dark. In conversation, Dreijer’s voice is playful, careful, slow. They speak with the kind of tentative intensity that makes me suspect there are a million thoughts whirring through their mind at any given time, and they have to carefully select the most tantalizing one to offer in response.
They sit in a soundproofed box they built inside the studio space they share with their brother, Olof, their counterpart in the now-defunct Knife. This is where Dreijer recorded Radical Romantics, their new album as Fever Ray. The surrounding setup is minimal: a microphone, a synthesizer, a few pedals, a couple of electric guitars. Finger tattoos flash when they speak—an apple and a pear on their right hand, a trio of woodland creatures on their left.
Across the three albums they’ve made as Fever Ray, as well as their work in the Knife, Dreijer has often submerged their vocals in machine processing that further distances the sound from what might be thought of as natural or real. Their signature effect is the formant shift, which alters a voice’s harmonic frequencies. It can make a voice sound like it booms from a whale’s ribcage or squirts out of a bird’s pinhole throat. In Dreijer’s hands, it often denatures the voice’s attachments to what might be conventionally thought of as a “male” or “female” sound. Through these cyborg assemblages, Dreijer tends to sing freeform, puzzle-box lyrics, giving life to emotional dramas with more complex and conflicting shades than a story played straight.
In 2017, Dreijer released Plunge, an exhilarating album about coming into a newly expressed queer sexuality. Its kink-strewn videos and club-optimized beats exposed a new side of Fever Ray, whose 2009 self-titled debut album dwelled in a more cloistered, melancholic space. If Plunge beckoned you into the sex party, Radical Romantics traces the bewildered morning after. Its love songs, both jagged and glistening, deal less in the thrill of finding love and more in the work it takes to survive it. Once you’ve arrived at an understanding of who you are, how do you sustain yourself? How do you share in the kind of love that feeds you as much as it excites you? How do you protect yourself not only from the people who would destroy you out of cruelty, but also from chasing your own poisonous desires?
To unstitch these questions, Dreijer brought in a roster of both new and familiar co-conspirators. Olof co-produces a handful of tracks, marking the first time the two siblings have worked together on a studio album since the Knife’s 2013 album Shaking the Habitual. Lisbon batida producer Nídia, Bristol surrealist Vessel, and Swedish techno-pop collagists Aasthma also contributed production. So did Nine Inch Nails braintrust and powerhouse soundtrack composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose post-industrial handiwork appears on the vengeful “Even It Out,” which is perhaps the first pop song ever recorded in which a parent openly threatens their child’s high school bully. “There’s no room for you,” Dreijer seethes over a steely, pummeling beat. “And we know where you live!”
The visuals that accompany Fever Ray’s music further develop the myriad characters they trace with their vocals. In the video for the new single “Kandy,” Dreijer plays two sides of a charged encounter. One character, an office drone in a corny tie, sits in a club’s private room, as a grotesque, balding figure with rotten teeth, bloodied eyes, stringy hair, and a pink silk suit dances for them. The Dreijer that’s performing straddles the other version of themself, licking their own platinum hair before binding the drone to their chair with a microphone cable. Where Plunge’s videos spotlighted Dreijer’s sense of humor and thirst for pleasure, “Kandy” deepens both into a strange twist of pathos: a deliberately ugly sensuality that exposes all the hurt and starving parts of the self.
“We deserve rest/Lovelier than diamonds,” Dreijer sings in a booming, shadowed voice on “Kandy.” The song hints at the space where real love might unfurl: a quiet, unhurried place that has room for whole people and all their unruly needs. Love grows from rest, and grows slowly, an increasing rarity in a culture that valorizes overwork and immediacy. With Radical Romantics, Dreijer clears fertile ground for a stiller world, scattering the seeds for the love that might blossom there.
Karin Dreijer: I felt very much that these were love songs. But then Martin [Falck], who I work with on the videos and visuals, said, “There is not really an actual love song on the album.” Maybe then it’s more about finding out what it is to love.
I have been reading so much. bell hooks’ All About Love was written over 20 years ago, but a lot of what she wrote is still so radical. She was worried there’s a whole generation that will be too scared to love, that people today are not open to being in that vulnerable state. To be able to be in a romantic relationship, you have to know a lot about yourself. You have to know about your own needs and what you need to feel loved and safe within a relationship. You have to have a radical acceptance of yourself to be able to be in love.
It’s a more calm and peaceful album than the last one, in that sense—a bit like sitting down and having landed: OK, this is what I need. That can also be super scary, because then you need to have boundaries to protect that space. You will probably have to say no to a lot of things that look very fun, but maybe they’re not so good for you.
In the “Kandy” video, we have a new character called Romance, who portrays all the bad stuff that you really want to throw yourself into. You want them to destroy you and swallow you. On the other hand, you also know that they are not the best choice for you. They’re your old, toxic pattern that you have promised your therapist to break—very hard to resist.
We worked with the choreographer and contemporary dancer Agnieszka Dlugoszewska for Romance’s moves in “Kandy.” They are very direct, a bit vulgar and grotesque—very fun to step into Romance’s shoes. All the characters we do are mental states, different emotions. On Plunge we worked mostly with the big, sexual baby. The ones we have now have been thinking a lot more. They’ve had some time to develop, to make plans, to step back and regroup. Romance has definitely had time to develop a manipulative side.
It does have the same hair as Romance, but I would say it’s also a bit related to Main, the character in the “What They Call Us” video. I’ve had a painting by a Norwegian artist, Odd Nerdrum, on my mind for a long time. It’s a self portrait where he looks at you with suffering eyes, and a tiny smile. He is nude from the chest down with an erection, in sort of a Rembrandt style. I thought of it as a Grindr pic. It contains so much longing: throwing yourself out there, head over heels. I tried to do a face like his.
Yes, though I don’t think of the vocals visually. When I think about how it sounds when I sing, my “natural” voice is the one in “Kandy” or “What They Call Us.” But when I record, it doesn’t sound like that from the start. One of the machines we use has this knob that says “gender.” You can switch it, and a lot of things happen. It’s not pitch, it’s formant. That can change how you think of gender, according to the sound of the voice.
[The different voices] are different sides of the storyteller—the one who’s writing the lyrics, which I don’t really see as me. That is very blurry. Of course I write the lyrics. But music works for me as a totally open space. I can do whatever I want. I do not have to think about gender so much, which is amazing, because in real life, you have to think about it all the time—how you’re perceived and what you are about to perform. It’s very luxurious to have this playground where you can be totally free.
That is sort of how I hear it in my head. In, for example, “Even It Out” and “Shiver,” where I am closer to my screaming punk rock voice, that is also a part of me. That voice is great to use on some occasions. I was assigned female at birth and I have been brought up as a girl. I have all my luggage from that. It’s great to be able to use that vocal in some perspectives.
The different voices are very much linked to emotional states. It is nice to sing the sadder songs with a deeper voice. The voices of “Kandy” and “What They Call Us” are more thoughtful and calm—somebody who has thought through what they are doing. And the other ones are more talking and doing before thinking. I’m not done finding out what it is to have different vocals. It’s very intuitive.
Yes. I normally record and re-record vocals many, many, many times. Some days when you are new to a track, you can feel very excited, and you go in and you’re just like, Woo, this is so fun! That was an amazing take! Then when you come back the day after, you feel like it’s too much. You have to redo everything on a day when you can relax. That is so, so difficult, because I get very excited when I record. I envy people who can sound like they just lay on the sofa while they sing. But also, I don’t do any drugs, and I almost don’t drink any alcohol anymore. So I have to find other ways to get into the states where I want to record, which can be super difficult.
It’s good to just walk for an hour before I start to record, just get the adrenaline down a bit. Not drink so much coffee. Maybe not do my ADHD medication in the morning. Sometimes it’s better to record at night when it’s dark. Some days, in the beginning, you don’t know the best way to tell the story.
I hadn’t planned to work with Olof when I started. I had made all these sketches of songs, but was a challenge for me to finish productions. I asked if he was interested in working with me on the productions, and he was. But he was very clear from the start: “These are your tracks.” At first, he was a bit analytical, asking, “What is a Fever Ray track and what is a Knife track, musically?” Which I don’t think about so much. The difference to me is that I get to have the last say on everything when it’s my track. I am directing much more. With the Knife, it’s super, super democratic. We start together and we do everything together. Here, I had the songs and lyrics and melodies when we started.
I was very into the Watchmen TV series. I had watched it three times and really liked their music in it. I was thinking it would be fun if they wanted to be involved. I asked them to collaborate on “Even It Out,” which stands out from the rest because it has a very clear story. It is about revenge on your kid’s bully. I’m almost 50 years old now, and they are also very old, and I know Trent has a lot of kids. So I thought it would be a fun thing to collaborate on, this story of parental revenge.
It is super personal. At first, I had the bully’s real name in the lyrics, which I did change because, in the end, it’s not them we want to take down. There were a lot of grown-up people around who didn’t take any responsibility and didn’t protect my kid in this situation. That is always the case, that the people who are supposed to be present are not there. A friend of mine said, “This is the first time I’ve heard an adult threatening a kid in music.” This bully absolutely needed a lot of help as well. The school system doesn’t work to protect kids.
There are so many different kinds of bullies. In this case, there were super sexist and very transphobic things going on at the school. That is probably still something that schools today are not used to. In Sweden, there has definitely been a homophobic, transphobic backlash. Six months ago, 20 percent of the people of Sweden voted for a fascist party with neo-Nazi roots. That has already made it much more difficult for a lot of people and children in schools. It has become much more OK to be many different kinds of phobic. I am very privileged in many different ways, but I can see a lot of things that I have been taking for granted about rights and our possibilities to live, to be alive.
Yes. To me, that song has a very queer perspective. It is about the things that you have been taking for granted, how it is not as safe anymore. It’s become much more OK to hate on people like us. The possibilities are decreasing. These are very, very scary times.
I don’t know if we should call it “sad.” Maybe there are calm moments, but it’s also about this radical acceptance of what you need to feel safe and loved. It brings you a stillness, but it also brings you a sadness. A lot of things don’t work out. You have to start saying no to things. You have to find people who also know about themselves and are able to express their needs. It requires time and stillness to be able to find these things out. We don’t live in a time with much stillness. We live under capitalism. And that is very difficult to combine with love, because it is sort of the opposite. Everything changes so fast, but it takes a lot of courage and time and bravery to find out about your own needs, and then to dare to accept and express them.
When you are brought up in a way where you learn things about connection and attachment that are not so good for you, you have to spend a lot of time relearning how to do things in a healthy way. You have to be active in that relearning. I do think love is a verb, an action. To work on your relationships with friends, or romantic relationships, or relationships toward your children if you have any, requires engagement and commitment. That is difficult to do if you’re working all the time, and a lot of people do have to work a lot just to be able to live. But a lot of people don’t dare to find out what it is to really love and take care of each other, too.
