Fever Ray
Webster Hall, NY
9/29/2009

(If you’ve never listened to The Knife, or Fever Ray, if you’ve never experienced the sheer wonder, the terror and childlike glee, that is the music they make, then this review will not be for you. Skip to the pretty pictures, poor dear.)

The live show of Fever Ray, nee Karin Dreijer Andersson, also known as the other half of I-guess-they’re-defunct Swedish electronic duo The Knife, is impossible to separate from the imagery she and her co-conspirators so cleverly crafted around her self-titled album. Fear, the animalism and savagery at the core of human nature, ritual and domesticity all come to light within the hour-and-change Karin and her band are on stage-and “come to light” is a very specific choice of words. Whereas the stage presentation of The Knife consisted of minimizing the presence of Karin and her brother Olof with front- and rear-projection video screens oft vastly overpowering the siblings, as Fever Ray Karin’s stage presence was less hidden and more augmented-with lazers and well-placed antique lamps. Granted, as the show progressed through its cycle of birth/life/death/repeat, Karin emerged from her position cloaked in shadows rarely, and the only time she was front and center was after the hellish, ecstatic death-ride of a cover of Nick Cave’s “Stranger Than Kindness”, as the gorgeous yet world-weary “When I Grow Up” slowly covered all in attendance like a cloak.

I’m pretty sure my auditory bar was set too high by comparing this show to seeing The Knife at the same venue years ago, but that show was, truth be told, the single live concert with the best sound I’ve ever experienced. It’s undoubtedly unfair to compare Karin’s solo project to her work with Olof, but it’s also, given the sonic similarities and her unique voice, an inevitability. So, during the opening “If I Had A Heart”, when Karin’s vocals were lost under the roar of the bass, it was unnerving. And exhilarating. That meant this would be a show with more of the human elements that made the Knife’s live stuff worth owning audio recordings off (see: the live “Pass This On”). And, when Karin allowed the gorgeous minimal-informed synthetics of “Dry and Dusty” to get nearly a verse ahead of her and then ran along to catch up, like a child falling several steps behind her mother, it made for that much more of a shared experience-the reason, after all, that you pay $35 to stand in a room with 14,000 others and experience what amounts to headphone music.

Not enough has ever been made of Karin’s stage presence, but, other than her giant Swedish elf of doom manning the laptop, the most impressive figure on stage was, in fact, her. Having now seen both of her musical incarnations, it’s evident that the “hands shaking like tremolo by the microphone stand in time to the music or with vocal enunciation” bit isn’t just her funnyscarymonkeygoblin character in The Knife-it’s her, it’s what she does, and it’s damn endearing.

It’s also not to bring to the show the knowledge of Karin’s previously-guarded personal life, which has leaked out in dribbles since the release of Fever Ray. So, when “When I Grow Up” emerged from the sonic backlash, the demonic evocation, the, if you will, “hell-ride” (RIP Wesley Willis) of “Stranger Than Kindness”, and so too did Karin, finally uncloaked and in full spotlight, smiling, the thought of her in her home role of mother and wife was as joyous as the song itself-in fact, I recall screaming “please just let me live here” midway through. It was utter, blissed perfection.

As the show ended, a Vashti Bunyan cover leading to a long, drawn-out and rapturous “Coconut”-only then did the magic of the night really dawn on me. It was like sand through hands, or like lazers through smoke-visible for only a second, and then gone.

(Photos courtesy Kristina Weise)