The arrival of Fever Ray to the eastern shores of the US brings to Boston one of the strangest and most fascinating nights of music the area has seen in quite some time. The show is opened by CHRISTEENE, who brings a beguiling set that switches from strobing industrial rave soundtrack to raw hardcore punk to slow jams highlighting a saxophone. Christeene herself is all that and more, incredibly impassioned, removing layers of clothing throughout her performance, and waxing poetic about life between songs with some choice metaphors centered around the area’s “clam chowder princesses” and under-sink chemicals. She’s joined by Cole Stone-Frisina as the painted-faced Jesus wielding the aforementioned sax, and Kevin Kenkel on keys, whose dazzling overcoat disappears mid-set to reveal only suspenders underneath. In a breathless monologue before the final club banger that closes the night, she talks about how we’ll “find each other in the darkness”, and ends with a bit about the importance of finding people “who care about the same things”.
Fever Ray’s entrance comes in a more subdued form, but no less impactful. The room fills with fog to the point that the Roadrunner stage is barely visible, and the mist curls up around a singular street lamp at the center that’s home to a gently pulsing cluster of lights. One by one, the five members of the live ensemble emerge, each in distinct dress, though perhaps none more striking than that of Karin Dreijer, who has transformed into the pale character from the cover of their latest record, Radical Romantics. Fever Ray is Dreijer’s solo project, born during a time when they were also making music as half of the landmark duo The Knife with brother Olof. That band wrapped its career after the release of 2013’s widely-loved Shaking the Habitual, but Karin has made two albums since its dissolution, and Radical Romantics reunites the two siblings for nearly half of its tracks. The sixteen-song set Dreijer has assembled covers both this latest work and their self-titled debut from 2009 in depth, with a few detours into the mid-period Plunge as well.
Each Fever Ray record has featured Dreijer’s face as its key art, but Radical Romantics’ central character is the most transformative depiction yet. Wearing a pale layer of makeup, eyes and lips heavily shadowed for contrast, and sporting a suit and comically large tie borrowed directly from the 90s, the figure comes to life onstage slightly differently than the album art, but every bit as much drawn from the same uncanny valley that has long inspired Fever Ray visuals. Dreijer imbues the figure with a wide-eyed stare, and amid a bevy of outsized facial expressions, one of those strange smiles that seems to suggest they know something you don’t. From beginning to end, the show is intensely choreographed and ceaselessly captivating. Dreijer is joined at the front by two other vocalists, and the trio frequently move in unison, their interactions complementing the progression of each song. Behind them, Romarna Campbell has a wealth of percussive implements both digital and analog, from the futuristic to the timeless. On the opposite side of the stage Minna Koivisto alternates between keyboard, drums, and occasionally woodwinds that add even further depth to each composition.
Dreijer has flowers to offer the audience in the interlude before ‘To The Moon and Back’, and all three vocalists sidle up against one another under pulsing red light to move to the beat of ‘Shiver’. Dreijer’s music remains unabashed as ever about sex and their queer identity – the designation of “radical romantics” could easily apply to any era of their work, and just as one would be under-served by ignoring the intricate choreography of the live show, even those typically averse to music videos ought to explore the visual world Dreijer has conjured through the years to accompany their music. But as Radical as things may get, Romantics also deals with more universal forms of desire. In ‘Shiver’, Dreijer simply wants to be touched, but immediately wonders: “Can I trust?” These are the foundational questions of any relationship, and Dreijer expresses needs beyond the purely sensual. Amid the gorgeous arpeggios of ‘Kandy’, they ask, “What if I die with this song inside?” – and later in ‘Tapping Fingers’ repeats, “Let me know if this is the last day”.
Just as Fever Ray interrogates emotion from the broadly existential to the specific and sensory; just as their sound employs both ends of the technological spectrum; Dreijer’s vocals are similarly pushed to their extremes by processing, either to piercing heights or cavernous lows. ‘An Itch’, which conveys similar themes to ‘Shiver’, preoccupied with touch, is just one of many songs that employs this technique, all within the precision of the choreography. Interestingly, when the band arrives at ‘I’m Not Done’ in the setlist, it takes the form of the ‘Still Not Done’ remix, from a post-Plunge companion album that compiled remixes both from that record as well as Fever Ray. It briefly reunited Karin and Olof, and featured Björk on the list of Dreijer’s high-profile collaborators, a roster which as of Radical Romantics now also includes Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the Nine Inch Nails duo who’ve branched out increasingly into film scores and production. ‘Still Not Done’ trades the gradual build of the original for the immediately-recognizable timbre of club synths, and provides a cathartic moment of pure, danceable release for the crowd during the last third of the evening.
The final stretch of the show also employs an altered version of ‘Now’s the Only Time I Know’, and Dreijer closes the set with a pair of particularly-spacious tracks from Fever Ray. ‘If I Had A Heart’ is a mantric thrum, their voice sounding like barely a whisper before being digitally transformed into new depths. There’s no encore as such, but a break is provided in the lengthy wind-up of closer ‘Coconut’. The song closes the night, as it did Fever Ray, on a self-affirming note: laying back, acknowledging “we are where we are”. But to find repose is not to disengage, as Dreijer outlines in ‘Tapping Fingers’, the final lyrical passage of Radical Romantics: “Everything’s better than sleeping”.
Review and Photos by Collin Heroux
