Fever Ray
★★★★
Radical Romantics
RABID. CD/DL/LP
A familiar erratic intensity pervades Karin Dreijer’s third LP.
Radical Romantics comes six years after Fever Ray’s Plunge and a decade from Shaking The Habitual by The Knife, the former project of siblings Karin and Olof Dreijer. Temporal gaps aside, this new offering hints at the genre-bending essence of the latter – the electronic patchwork contains fragments of ambient (Bottom Of The Ocean), new wave with a nod to David Sylvian (North) and K-pop (Looking For A Ghost). The similarity is not coincidental – Olof co-produces a few tracks, including the arpeggio-led opener What They Call Us. Although musically it might be a step back, thematically, Radical Romantics can be seen as a mellow follow-up to the angrier, gender-politicsdriven Plunge. Instead, it celebrates self-exploration. Wrapped in an eerie cobweb of synths, Shiver finds conflict in attraction: “Some girls will make you blush, some girls will make you shiver.”