fever ray radical romantics tour

"woo hoo! there will be an album - it's called Radical Romantics, cause everything needs to be dissected and loved and torn and built back up again and we're dreamers aren't we?"

Radical Romantics , Fever Ray ’s first new album in five-plus years, is out now . In conjunction, Fever Ray unveils their arresting music video for album highlight, “ Even It Out .” A tribute to the campy universe of John Waters, the “Even It Out” video draws influence from Susan Sontag and Divine's portrayal of Dawn Davenport in Waters’ cult classic movie Female Trouble . Keen eyes will spot cameos from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross , who co-produced and performed on “Even It Out,” as well as the song, “North.”

Fever Ray first started on Radical Romantics in fall 2019; working in the Stockholm studios built with brother and fellow The Knife member Olof Dreijer after the former completed the last Fever Ray tour in 2018 and the latter returned from living in Berlin. Some time in mid-2020, Olof joined Dreijer in working on Radical Romantics , co-producing and co-writing album opener “What They Call Us,” released in October to a wealth of praise, plus three further songs. These tracks on Radical Romantics are the first time the siblings have produced and written music together in eight years.

Other co-producers and performers include the Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik’s technicolor dance project Aasthma, and the aforementioned power duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails) and experimental artist and producer Vessel. Long-time collaborator, Martin Falck, joins Dreijer in creating the all encompassing visual world of Radical Romantics -era Fever Ray.

Radical Romantics by Fever Ray is out now on Rabid Records.

Tracklisting:

1. What They Call Us

3. New Utensils

5. Even It Out

6. Looking For A Ghost

7. Carbon Dioxide

9. Tapping Fingers

10. Bottom Of The Ocean

Radical Romantics is available to order now from th e Fever Ray store in limited edition red vinyl and standard edition black vinyl as well as CD.

Order Ltd Red Vinyl 

Order Black Vinyl Edition

Order CD Edition

New  Radical Romantics hoodies and t-shirts designed by Martin Falck and manufactured in French Terry, 100% Cotton - Organic Carded, Dry Handfeel, 400 GSM are also available to pre-order from the Fever Ray store.

Both the hoodie and t-shirt are made in a traceable and transparent supply chain with no harmful materials or chemicals. Delivered with a focus on reducing carbon emissions as well as driving circularity.

Order Radical Romantics Hoodie

Order Radical Romantics Tee

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Fever Ray announces 2023 world tour

The thereʼs no place iʼd rather be tour marks the first fever ray shows since 2018.

Fever Ray has announced details of the Thereʼs No Place Iʼd Rather Be Tour, their first live shows in over four years. Karin Dreijer will follow the release of new album Radical Romantics with a series of shows across North America and Europe, including dates in New York and Oakland, California next year. Tickets are available from Friday, November 18. Scroll down for date and venue details.

Radical Romantics will be released on March 10, 2023. The first single "What They Call Us" was released last month with "Carbon Dioxide" arriving soon after. It will be the first new Fever Ray album in over five years, following their self-titled 2009 record and their 2017 sophomore LP, Plunge .

Read Next: Fever Ray shares “Shiver” video

Collaborators on the project will include Nine Inch Nails‘ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Vessel, and Nídia. Dreijer’s brother and former The Knife bandmate, Olof Dreijer, also co-produced and co-wrote four of the songs on Radical Romantics , which is the first time the siblings have made music together in eight years.

Fever Ray Tour Dates:

March 23 - Oslo, NE - Sentrum Scene March 24 - Copenhagen, DK - VEGA March 25 - Gothenburg, SE - GBG Film Studios March 27 - Riga, LV - Hanzas Perons March 28 - Tallinn, EE - Noblessner Foundry March 30 - Warsaw, PL - World Wide Warsaw Festival April 1 - Amsterdam, NE - Melkweg April 3 - Brussels, BE - Cirque Royal April 4 - Cologne, DE - E-Werk April 6 - Luxembourg City, LU - Den Atelier April 7 - The Hague, NE - Rewire Festival May 3 - New York, NY - Terminal 5 May 5 - Boston, MA - Roadrunner May 7 - Chicago, IL - The Salt Shed May 10 - Oakland, CA - Fox Theater

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Radical Romantics

By fever ray.

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Fever Ray Searches for Truth in Sweden’s Snowy Tundra in ‘North’ Video

• By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

Fever Ray ’s Karin Dreijer ventures into a snowy expanse in the new music video for “North,” a track off their recent album, Radical Romantics , co-produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Directed by longtime collaborator Martin Falck, the “North” video finds Fever Ray smack in the middle of the Swedish tundra, surrounded by ice, snow, distant mountains, and what look like shifting, crumbling glaciers. 

“‘North’ is about the desire to find out what is true, the curiosity and courage to sit with the most difficult emotions,” Dreijer said in a statement. “It’s about the task of weighing words against actions, of letting go and the stillness that comes afterward.”

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Fever Ray Tour Dates

Nov. 5 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s Nov. 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern Nov. 8 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern Nov. 10 – Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium Nov. 12 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater Nov. 14 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo Nov. 18 – Mexico City, MX @ Corona Capital

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Fever Ray Announces 2023 Tour Dates

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

The post Fever Ray Announces 2023 Tour Dates appeared first on Consequence .

Karin Dreijer is set to return in March with a new Fever Ray album called Radical Romantics . In support of the release, the artist has announced a supporting tour, which marks their first such outing in five years.

“There’s No Place I’d Rather Be Tour” begins in Europe, with early spring shows scheduled in cities like Oslo, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Brussels. In addition to headlining dates, Dreijer’s tour includes performances at the World Wide Warsaw Festival and the Rewire Festival in The Hague, Netherlands. Fever Ray’s European leg wraps up in April, and in May, the artist will perform a handful of shows in the US, including stops in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Oakland.

Tickets for the “There’s No Place I’d Rather Be Tour” go on sale Friday, November 18th at 10:00 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster .

Fever Ray’s 2023 tour coincides with their album Radical Romantics ,  which is out March 10th via Mute Records. The LP is Dreijer’s first since 2017’s Plunge and features Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik’s technicolor dance project Aasthma, and Vessel. Dreijer’s sibling and former The Knife bandmate, Olof Dreijer, also produced and co-wrote four songs on the album, including the lead single “What They Call Us.” Fever Ray has also previewed the project with the track “Carbon Dioxide.” Pre-orders for the record are ongoing.

Fever Ray 2023 Tour Dates: 03/23 — Oslo, NE @ Sentrum Scene 03/24 — Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA 03/25 — Gothenburg, SE @ GBG Film Studios 03/27 — Riga, LV @ Hanzas Perons 03/28 — Tallinn, EE @ Noblessner Foundry 03/30 — Warsaw, PL @ World Wide Warsaw Festival 04/01 — Amsterdam, NE @ Melkweg 04/03 — Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royal 04/04 — Cologne, DE @ E-Werk 04/06 — Luxembourg City, LU @ Den Atelier 04/07 — The Hague, NE @ Rewire Festival 05/03 — New York, NY @ Terminal 5 05/05 — Boston, MA @ Roadrunner 05/07 — Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed 05/10 — Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater

Fever Ray Announces 2023 Tour Dates Carys Anderson

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Music Reviews

Fever ray's 'radical romantics' explores love in all of its freaky, complicated forms.

Marissa Lorusso

In their work as Fever Ray, artist Karin Dreijer has used eerie, experimental pop music to excavate love's more complicated or marginalized incarnations. Nina Andersson hide caption

In their work as Fever Ray, artist Karin Dreijer has used eerie, experimental pop music to excavate love's more complicated or marginalized incarnations.

"An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word 'love,' " the feminist poet Adrienne Rich once wrote, "is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other." Are those the words you'd use to describe romance: delicate, violent, terrifying? Perhaps not. In the face of a more traditional, or more culturally consumable, conception of romance — a candlelit dinner on Feb. 14, a classic boy-meets-girl rom-com, a dozen roses, butterflies in your stomach — Rich's vision might feel downright radical, a sharp and urgent reminder of the power of a different approach: one that's more nuanced, more deliberate and perhaps ultimately more rewarding.

In their work as Fever Ray , artist Karin Dreijer has long been finely attuned to Rich's definition of love, using their eerie, experimental pop music to excavate its more complicated or marginalized incarnations. Fever Ray's icy, alluring self-titled debut was created in the isolating haze of new parenthood; the follow-up, 2017's magnificent Plunge , is a thrilling and righteous exploration of queer eroticism. Radical Romantics , Fever Ray's new record, looks at love even more broadly: romantic connection, sexual desire, the making of family, the fostering of community, the rewards of commitment. It is interested in love not as a destination but, as Rich would put it, an ongoing process, and gives a glimpse into the many approaches — bravado and vulnerability, experimentation and hesitation, violence and delicacy — that process requires.

What might make romance radical? For starters, Fever Ray's world feels largely unrestricted by the norms of gender. Dreijer's shape-shifting vocals have been a staple of their music since their time as one-half of The Knife , the subversive and now defunct pop duo they formed with their brother Olof. This practice of pitch-shifting and vocal processing allows them to perform femininity, masculinity, androgyny — sometimes all in the same song, sometimes all at once. "Music works for me as a totally open space," they told Pitchfork recently. "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."

That sense of queer freedom is everywhere on Radical Romantics — in the delightfully ungendered pet names ("smoothie," "bird seed") on "Looking For A Ghost"; the sapphic eroticism of "Shiver"; the depth of their delivery on "Tapping Fingers" or the girlish helium voice on "Carbon Dioxide." It's perhaps most striking in the androgynous characters Dreijer portrays in their music videos — as in " Kandy ," where they play both roles in a freaky, sensual encounter: both the bored, suit-wearing office drone in a club's dimly lit room and the grotesque, glitter-speckled, balding singer who libidinously performs for them, eventually tying them to the chair with a mic cable and earning a smile. As in much of Dreijer's works, there are no obvious gender roles or puritanical sexual norms to be found in the video, and Dreijer's obfuscation of these classic romantic tropes makes the aching, thirsty emotional core of the work even clearer.

Where Plunge playfully clanged and thrilled and fantasized — an urgent, intense, often frenetically paced record — the heartbeat of Radical Romantics is somewhat slower, its mood more pensive. Dreijer tapped a number of co-producers for the record, including their brother Olof, who imbues tracks like "What They Call Us" and "Shiver" with many of the startling, squiggling synths and syncopated beats that have become a hallmark of their collaborations. "Looking For A Ghost" is propulsive, thanks to Portuguese batida DJ and producer Nídia, yet still inquisitive. And there's a haunted quality to tracks like "North," where production from Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross add industrial grit and crunch, and "Tapping Fingers," where washes of synth, courtesy of Swedish production duo Aasthma, advance and retreat under Dreijer's forlorn voice.

The more reflective tone and pacing fits the record's lyrical perspective, where romance is never presented as a given or a sure thing — another trope Dreijer gently admonishes. Instead, they demonstrate the care and resolve that goes into maintaining these forms of love: the decisions, the needs, the boundaries, the mistakes, the courage. The first line of Radical Romantics is an apology — "First I'd like to say that I'm sorry" — on a song that ultimately turns into a declaration of vulnerability: "The person who came here was broken." Elsewhere on the record, there are sensitive questions — "Can I trust you?"; "Is this feeling true?" — and sincere requests: "Be nice to me"; "Be still and patient"; "Let me know." And when Dreijer does sing candidly about desire, otherwise straightforwardly sensual lyrics can land with a twist, on another plane entirely from romantic cliché. A line like, "She laid me down and whispered / all girls want kandy," in Dreijer's unsettlingly measured delivery, feels miles away from a bubblegum pop hit ; when they whisper-sing, "In the whole wide world / there's no place I'd rather be / than with you" in their lower register, it sounds not like an escapist fantasy but like the result of careful, mature consideration.

That's not to say there aren't moments of intensity on Radical Romantics , too. On "Even It Out," Dreijer fantasizes about getting revenge on their kid's high school bully: "There's no room for you / and we know where you live," Dreijer sings, "one day we might come after you / taking back what's ours." (It reminds me of a scene from the film Tár , where Cate Blanchett, as the title character, seeks out her child's bully on the playground. "If you ever do it again," she warns the young perpetrator in a frank, cool tone, "I'll get you.") Dreijer had originally called out the bully by their actual name in the song, but changed it after a friend said it was disturbing to hear an adult threatening a child. Still, in its own way, could that be radical love, too — transgressing a taboo out of loyalty or the desire to protect? ("Violent, often terrifying," as Rich wrote, indeed.) Elsewhere, on the hedonistic headrush of "Carbon Dioxide," production by the British experimental artist and producer Vessel makes the song feel urgent and arena-sized, with bright synths that ping-pong around Dreijer's many voices.

Overall, if Dreijer shows love to be the result of anything on Radical Romantics, it's the hard work of patience. Dreijer has described much of the album as being about the "radical acceptance of what you need to feel safe and loved." That acceptance, they say, "brings you a stillness, but it also brings you a sadness": It means recognizing what doesn't work for you and being able to say no. The album ends in that place: with a seven-minute composition, originally written more than a decade ago for an Ingmar Bergman play, that feels, at times, both stirring and meditative. The song unfurls with gentle swells and wordless vocalizing and comes to feel like a resting place. It is slightly sad — a fitting place to say goodbye to the things that love is not . After nine tracks of asking, wanting, waiting, pushing, finding, searching, enjoying, it is fitting that Radical Romantics ends with a song of stillness, and a model of the radical acceptance that might be found there.

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20 Questions With Fever Ray: Loving Cyndi Lauper, Being ‘Too Shy to Karaoke’ & Celebrating Latest Album With a ‘Queer Reunion’

Fever Ray, the project of Swedish synth-pop artist Karin Dreijer, discusses their latest album 'Radical Romantics.'

By Lyndsey Havens

Lyndsey Havens

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See latest videos, charts and news

Sophie Ellis-Bextor Credits Her LGBTQ+ Fans for Making Her Feel 'Safe on Stage'

Trending on billboard.

1. What’s the first piece of music you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?

The first record I bought was a 7” with Cyndi Lauper’s “All Through the Night.” I thought it was the best thing I’ve ever heard. I still like it.

2.  What was the first concert you saw?

I don’t remember — my dad took me to some, I guess. But I went to my first festival when I was 15, Hultsfredsfestivalen, in 1990. 22 Pistepirkko I remember [them playing]. That was a great show.

3.  Who made you realize you could be an artist full-time?

I guess I realized it myself when I started to make money out of it. I’ve done it the past 20 years now. Before that I had other jobs as well.

4. What was your first job?

I was cleaning hotel rooms.

5.  Whose career path continues to inspire you most?

I think I get inspired by people who are passionate about what they do, who keep on learning new things, who understand how to combine work with relationships, friends, family and manages to take care of themselves. It can be in any profession.

6. How did your hometown shape who you are?

7. If you could see any artist in concert, dead or alive, who would it be?

I would have loved to see Eurythmics around the Savage album. And Cyndi Lauper when she released “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.”

8. What’s the best or favorite concert you have seen so far this year, why?

I haven’t seen so many unfortunately, cause I’ve been working too much with the tour. But I saw Sarah Parkman a few weeks ago in Gothenburg. She has an incredible voice, it was a great show.

9. What’s the last album you listened to in one sitting?

Bendik Giske’s Cracks , I love it.

10. What’s your favorite album of all time?

Around the World in a Day with Prince.

11. How did you celebrate the release of your third album, Radical Romantics ?

We had a big party in Stockholm with many great DJs and performances — people said afterwards it was like a queer reunion after the pandemics. I was there as Demonalisa from the “Even It Out” video.

12. What song on the album was particularly challenging to write?

I think writing is always a mix of easy and light — some days everything is clear and some days everything’s a struggle. I work office hours, mostly. I think routines are the best way to get things done, even though routines also van be a struggle. Days when you don’t get ideas, you just practice — practice a new instrument, practice vocals, practice a new plug-in. You just have to stay in it.

13. You’ve long worked with your brother, and he’s a co-writer on several tracks here. What’s the key to working with family?

14. If you had to pick one lyric that you have thought about or revisited most since the album released, which one would it be and why?

I think they all mean a lot to me. It’s interesting to perform them live now — you have to learn to live with them. When you write them and record them, you just think about how to tell this specific story, once. But now, you have to make friends with them in another way.

15. What’s your karaoke go-to?

I am too shy to karaoke.

16. What show of yours stands out as being particularly moving or memorable?

My recent one was den Atelier in Luxemburg. We didn’t have any expectations — it’s a bit of a strange city, very clean and a lot of money. Then we played at a wonderful punk venue and the audience was just amazing, we had such a good time.

17. What’s your favorite book?

My oldest kid made me re-read Kathy Acker lately, who I love.

18. What’s your favorite film or TV show?

I love so many films. Those by John Waters are new favorites.

19.. What’s one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?

You have to make friends with yourself. Treat yourself like your own best friend.

20. What remains at the top of your professional bucket list?

I am very grateful of everything that’s happened already. When finishing an album I always think of the last album I’ve made like the very last I will make, that I might do something completely different next time. I don’t have a professional bucket list. I’d like to keep working and collaborate with fun people, there’s a lot of things that needs to be widened and explored.

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Radical Romantics

Best New Music

By Anna Gaca

March 10, 2023

Listen to  Fever Ray and learn to recognize the unrecognizable. On one of their new songs, “Looking for a Ghost,” Karin Dreijer plunks out a tune inspired by Henry Mancini’s “ Baby Elephant Walk ,” stacking calliope synths behind the berserk couplet “eating out/like cannibal” and a Bob Marley quote. Then this horny little collage of references slowly assumes shape: In their slyly sincere way, Dreijer is writing a personals ad. “Looking for a person/With a special kind of smile,” it reads. “ Teeth like razors /Fingers like spice.” You know, someone who gives you that  tingle . Lisbon producer  Nídia fits them with a corkscrewing synth and a beat that lurches and jingles. “Looking for a ghost in the midst of life,” Dreijer says, which could almost be a literal complaint about queer dating in one’s forties, and then they wink: “Asking for a friend/Who’s kind of shy.”

Shy or not, we’ve come to know Dreijer better since their days as a shadowy beaked figure alongside their brother Olof in the heady electronic project  the Knife . As Fever Ray, they make synth-pop with mucous membrane and muscle memory, writing songs that throw off unlikely hooks (“ mustn’t hurry ”) and chart new orbital paths around large pop structures. With a title like a college seminar and Dreijer’s signature blend of kink and theory,  Radical Romantics is essentially a collection of notes on love. Love—whether sexy, overwhelming, or vengeful—links together the recurring motivations of the Fever Ray catalog: curiosity and exploration, family born and chosen, sexual freedom and pleasure. In the past, perhaps, they have sung about love as something vague and unknowable. Now they go looking.

In the run-up to 2017’s vivid and lustful  Plunge , Dreijer talked about their dating experiments with candor that came as a surprise. “I’ve been on Tinder,” they  said then, presumably with a glint in their eye.  Plunge  was no stranger to love but also called it “the final puzzle piece.” Anybody will tell you that to find it, first you must look within. Like many, Dreijer shifted their priorities during the pandemic, saying  recently that the past few years provided them space to practice patience. In a modern culture that promotes love as instant gratification—keep swiping—Fever Ray now search elsewhere. Referencing bell hooks’ influential  All About Love and  Gift From the Sea , Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s 1955 spiritual bestseller, Dreijer is on an inner quest through a region of adult heartache that’s less often explored.

There are a typically savvy collection of collaborators: Along with Nídia on “Looking for a Ghost,” there’s Olof, whose sorcerous trap doors turn the album’s first four tracks into an unofficial and much-anticipated Knife reunion; English producer  Vessel , on the standout “Carbon Dioxide”; Aasthma, the production duo of  Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik, on “Tapping Fingers”; and  Trent Reznor and  Atticus Ross , whose creeping industrial groans give Dreijer’s reality the weird thrill of fiction. The baleful mood kicks in on “Even It Out,” a small act of cosmic reckoning: “This is for Zacharias/Who bullied my kid in high school/There’s no room for you/And we know where you live!” Dreijer yowls. Where Lydia Tár  stoops , Dreijer stands. “I do things methodically,” they sneer, slicing up the word as implied violence: “M-m-m-m-m-methodically.”

Radical Romantics doesn’t have a line like  Plunge ’s “this country makes it hard to fuck.” It’s slipperier and often slower, working through problems that take longer to solve even as the sky darkens. “Did you hear what they call us?” Dreijer moans on opener “What They Call Us,” a song  written from “a very queer perspective.” But we cannot hear the despicable words, only turn to one another anxiously for confirmation that we are not alone yet. Dreijer’s asphyxiating delivery implies danger—the silent alarm or the spreading cloud—but for the moment, love shields us and we proceed through a beat that licks like flames at the heel. Everywhere their words are full of the exquisite caution of experience, as on “Shiver,” where a high pitch shift seems to throw a question into the hands of its recipient: “Can I trust you?”

Sometimes you cannot. Sometimes love is bad for you. Sometimes the fire is too hot and the glove melts at the touch. This is the love of obsession and distraction, like the whining mosquito voice that echoes Dreijer’s words on “Carbon Dioxide”: “Hy-y-y-per focus!” (Later they quote from 1 Corinthians 13, the memorable Bible passage on love: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”) We’ll need new tools to survive, so on the eerie “New Utensils,” they supply practical knowledge of how to build a fire and then the secret techniques, stretching and squeezing like a bellows as they list some of the ways to make love: “Lips/Fists/A mouthful of words.” Love and fire are the two essential human inventions and where we’re going, we’ll need both. 

Love is patient but life is short. On  Radical Romantics , Dreijer uncovers fresh anxiety about aging and the passage of time, if only because they feel they have so much love left to give: “What if I die with this song inside?” The album concludes with a mystery called “Bottom of the Ocean,” one for the whales, seven minutes of vocal drip-drops and scraping synths that unfold at the mournful pace of underwater footage of the  Titanic . Previous Fever Ray albums set such meditative passages somewhere in the middle, so the bookend placement feels somehow deathly. Love is partially unknowable; could it be out of reach? Or, asks Lindbergh in  Gift From the Sea , “Is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence?” Here is love,  vast as the ocean . Dreijer leaves us there, sinks down and out of sight as we come to rest in the ancestral womb of life, waiting to be born anew.

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Fever Ray’s Fire of Love

By Liam Hess

Over the course of their 14-year career as a solo artist, Karin Dreijer of Fever Ray has created their very own multiverse of characters. The visuals for their first, self-titled album—released in 2009 while The Knife, the beloved electronic duo they formed with their brother, Olof, was on hiatus—imagined Dreijer as a kind of spectral, shamanic vision of postpartum depression made flesh, with a face caked in arsenic-white makeup and painted over with triangles and oversized teeth. Returning in 2017 with the bold, bracing  Plunge,  Dreijer channeled the record’s abrasive, club-ready beats and candid lyrics into a character best described as a pure pleasure seeker with a predilection for kink. In a bald cap and smudged, glittering purple makeup, Dreijer’s alter ego swanned about in everything from exaggerated bodybuilder suits to outfits dripping with hot pink crystals and pearls. 

Yet in their latest video, for “Even It Out”—the fourth and final single from their new album  Radical Romantics,  released last Friday—Dreijer morphs into perhaps their most unexpected form yet, rooted in a more straightforward femininity. Straightforward on the surface, at least: Gussied up as a sleazy John Waters vamp by way of  Grey Gardens, with eyebrows licked into Kembra Pfahler diagonals, they stalk the corridors of a cabin in the woods decorated in garish retro wallpapers, applying red lipstick, rubbing their breasts with grease, and digging a grave in their backyard that they later piss on. Over a thundering bassline courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Dreijer howls about their urge to exact revenge on Zacharias, “who bullied my kid in high school”—a delicious (and entirely accidental) echo of the brilliant “I am Petra’s father” scene in  Tár.  It’s strange, seductive, and slightly terrifying—in other words, latter-day Fever Ray at their finest. 

“Martin [Falck, Dreijer’s co-creative director] and I had the discussion for a long time that I wanted to play a more femme character, but I couldn’t really think of how,” they say of the visual. “We had to find an interesting way to do it.” After consulting with a drag artist friend, Dreijer and Falck eventually landed on this “fabulous creature” crawling around her dank boudoir. “I don't know what everyone should call her, although  we call her Mona Lisa, or Melody,” Dreijer adds, laughing at the glorious absurdity of it all. “But yeah, it was an interesting process.”

If there’s a sly note of humor coloring the world of  Radical Romantics, that’s intentional. Across the album’s 10 tracks, the sincere meets the silly, to thrilling results. On the first single (and album opener), “What They Call Us,” Dreijer’s voice drops into a breathy, longing growl over a pulsing techno-inflected synth line that recalls The Knife’s “Silent Shout.” “The person who came here was broken,” they sing. “Can you fix it, can you care?” But the video adds another, more playful undertone: Dressed as a worker drone in a drab grey suit (but with an acid house happy-face tie and frogspawn-green eyeshadow, of course), Dreijer rolls around sheets of paper being spewed out by a printer in a concrete-walled office, reheats a Swedish cinnamon bun in a microwave, and descends into a strobe-lit basement club where they give themselves over to its sweat-flecked, tinsel-strewn spirit of abandon. “That song was actually the first song that I wrote,” says Dreijer. “And it's a good opening, I think—the lyrics are all so nice and sweet.”

By Emma Specter

By Marie Bladt

By Hannah Jackson

Yet, where  Radical Romantics  might appear to be a lighter, brighter offering from Dreijer on the whole—the lush, swaggering chorus of “Kandy” and the furious celebration of foreplay on album highlight “Shiver” showcase a pop sensibility only fleetingly glimpsed in past projects—its origins lie in a moment of personal turmoil. Following the  Plunge  tour in 2018, Dreijer found themselves exhausted and all but burnt out, suffering from anxiety and panic attacks before eventually being diagnosed with ADHD. When it came to beginning the writing process for  Radical Romantics,  Dreijer understood that taking their time with it wasn’t just a luxury, but a necessity. 

Connecting with Dreijer over Zoom from their home in Stockholm, however, they appear visibly relaxed—even in the midst of rehearsals for their upcoming tour with choreographer Agnieszka Dlugoszewska. “I am usually very slow when making music anyway, but I worked on it for maybe three years,” they say of the new album. “I think I really took the time that I needed.” Just as fortuitously, when Dreijer was ready to start recording during the first year of the pandemic, they were able—partly due to Sweden’s somewhat flexible lockdowns—to travel to their studio each day. “I think that sort of saved me during that time,” they add. 

One of the details surrounding the new record that Dreijer’s loyal, tight-knit fanbase was quick to notice is the production presence of Olof Dreijer on the opening quartet of songs. While the duo officially disbanded in 2014, after the tour for their fourth album,  Shaking the Habitual,  the welcoming of Olof into the Fever Ray fold sparked chatter of a possible Knife reunion. 

Dreijer isn’t opposed to that possibility—over the course of our conversation, it becomes clear they’re not opposed to any possibility—but they do emphasize that this was a case of Olof helping to bring Fever Ray to life, as opposed to the more collaborative process of making a Knife record. “When we did stuff for The Knife before, it was very democratic and we would do everything together,” says Dreijer. “But with this, he was much more involved in producing and making sounds and stuff, and I always had the last say about things. So I think we both were very clear that this is Fever Ray, and these are Fever Ray songs.” 

And while there are quiet nods to their past work in The Knife in  Radical Romantics —including the synthetic steel drums on “Kandy” that hark back to  Deep Cuts,  and the accompanying visual co-starring Olof that recalls their masterpiece of a music video for “Pass This On”—the lyrics make it clear this is Dreijer’s territory, and Dreijer’s alone. Where  Plunge  explored the art of loving through the prism of embracing their queer identity,  Radical Romantics  dives into a greater plurality of experience, examining, for example, the love and rage that arose when their kid was bullied with “Even It Out,” or, on “Carbon Dioxide,” drawing a parallel between the chemical compound—“the extra-everything of unconstrained nature,” in Dreijer’s words—and the giddy, disorientating experience of falling head over heels in love. 

“I think I’ve always tried to understand how to make romantic relationships work through my music,” says Dreijer, noting that bell hooks ’s  All About Love served as something of a guiding light for their journeys into love’s great unknown on  Radical Romantics . “I think what I have found out through the years, and by reading a lot, and going to a lot of therapy, and through bell hooks, is what she writes about love as an action—that is it’s a verb, it’s something that we do,” they say. “Which I take to mean, to be able to be in love and to have good relationships—not only romantic relationships, but all relationships—it’s very important to define what it is we’re talking about. I also think that the radical side of it comes from finding your own needs and also accepting your own needs, which I think can often be the scariest thing. Because maybe some of your needs aren’t accepted by everybody else, and so you become very vulnerable.”

Sure, the record has its vulnerable moments, such as the yearning battle cry of love on “North,” with its sweeping, widescreen synths; the fear of being mocked for their passion expressed on “Tapping Fingers.” But taken all together, what emerges is a strange and steely kind of confidence. It evidently marks a new chapter in Dreijer’s lyrical journey of negotiating sex and dating and parenthood as a queer person; while  Plunge  was all about the giddy highs and lows,  Radical Romantics  feels closer to finding some form of balance. “I think it’s about finding out about your own needs and then communicating them to the people around you that you want to have loving relationships with,” Dreijer says of the record’s themes. “I think that has to start with some form of self-acceptance. To dare to go there, to find out about your own needs, it takes a lot of work, and it takes a lot of courage to communicate them. It also requires time for things like reflection and communication, and those are difficult things within capitalist society. I still think love is a radical act.”

Radical not least for Dreijer’s willingness to chart the topography of queer desire in a world that is becoming increasingly hostile to expressions of queerness. It’s a fact they are all too aware of as they prepare for their tour, and the possibility of offering a safe space to their community of fans to revel in the weird and wonderful sonic universe they’ve constructed. “In Sweden, something like a quarter of our population voted for a party that has its roots in the Nazi Party, and that has had a huge impact on our government now,” they say. “I think we’ve already seen a lot of changes happening, and it affects all minorities. Queer culture, as just one example, is something we can never take for granted.”

The joy Dreijer is finding in bringing this new world to life is simple. “I’ve always tried to understand why I do music, and I think I understand it better now,” they say. “I think it’s really just a place for me to feel free, and also to create spaces where other people can feel free within these little worlds the music creates.” They pause, before adding with a shrug: “It’s just amazing to learn new things.” Just when you think you have Dreijer pinned down, it seems they’re ready to shapeshift into something else entirely. 

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Fever Ray – ‘Radical Romantics’ review: a symphonic ode to love

The Swedish experimentalist uses sharp production and imaginative arrangements to convey the emotions

Like many uncomfortable conversations, Fever Ray ‘s album ‘Radical Romantics’ begins with an apology. Their third album – and first in almost six years – begins with the bubbling track, ‘What They Call Us’, co-produced and written with their brother and fellow The Knife member, Olof. They lean in at the start with a hushed confession, “First I like to say that I’m sorry / I’ve done all the tricks that I can” , rattling it out slowly over oscillating tempo and crackling drums. The arrangements are sinister and punctuated with ominous lyrics about yearning, questioning and free-falling into love. Even with its disorienting messages and spiralling composition, the Dreijer duo’s crisp production creates a crisp and biting sonic experience.

It was 2019 when Fever Ray – aka Karin Dreijer – made the decision to make an album about affairs of the heart. Working in the Stockholm studio they built with their brother, the Swedish experimentalist got to work birthing 10 imaginative pop songs. The result is a collection of exhilarating pop vignettes examining love as a preoccupation, an unconstrained struggle and most importantly, a myth. ‘Radical Romantics’ follows Dreijer’s self-titled 2009 debut and 2017’s buoyant ode to infatuation, ‘Plunge’, which NME ranked as one of the top albums of the year .

‘Radical Romantics’ ability to communicate Dreijer’s perspective on love and relationships exquisitely is thanks largely in part to its inventive production. Experimental artist and producer Vessel, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia are among those lending their purview to the album. Nine Inch Nails ‘ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross also produce and perform on two album tracks, lending hints of their industrial rock expertise to ‘Even it Out’, a menacing track featuring Dreijer threatening a school bully, and ‘North’ where the electro-pop singer weighs in on the difficult task of separating someone’s words from their actions.

The brightest and most subversive moments on the album come when Dreijer enlist blunt lyrics and wobbling instrumentals to articulate hard-to-explain emotions flawlessly. ‘Shiver’, a primer on confusing intimate connections captures this effect perfectly. In the trill track, they reiterate “I just want to be touched / I just want to shiver” , following that admission with scattered otherworldly howls. Dreijer’s viewpoint, almost like that of an alien looking down on earth and dissecting interpersonal human relationships from a distance, is also present in ‘Tapping Fingers’, which they call the “saddest song” they’ve ever written. The testament to brutal longing takes place against a backdrop of searing soundscapes, lush synth and outlines a litany of paranoid queries, conveying romance as a ego-shattering event.

In ‘Kandy’, the Dreijers venture back into The Knife production, even using the same synthesizer featured on their track, ‘The Captain’. The four tracks co-produced by Olof (‘What They Call Us’, ‘Shiver’, ‘New Utensils’, ‘Kandy’), are the first time the synth-pop duo have joined forces since 2014, and the result is both refreshing and familiar.

The album ends on ‘Bottom Of The Ocean’, which Karin produced and wrote alone more than two decades ago. The song arrives with echoes flooding out in different vocal ranges right as ethereal instrumentals create a wall around Dreijer’s voice. There are no lyrics in the track, sans the sonorous repeating of “ oh ”, and it makes for a perfect meditative close for an album, which plays in sound fantastically to capture the full cataclysmic event of being a human and experiencing love.

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• Release date: March 10, 2023
• Record label: Rabid Records
• Related Topics
• Nine Inch Nails
• Trent Reznor

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