Fever Ray | Pop review
You can count on one finger the mothers who play gigs costumed as a monstrous cross between a fly and a witch, surrounded by musicians dressed as bald-wigged characters from a horror movie (one lucky keyboardist even had a dagger embedded in his back). It's no surprise that Karin Dreijer Andersson, aka Fever Ray, was apparently told by her husband that her music is too unsettling to be heard by their two children.
And yet her group's look, which was complemented by dim purplish lighting and a cat's-cradle of green laser beams, paled alongside the suffocating properties of the sound.
Dreijer Andersson, whose day job is as half of cult Swedish electronic duo the Knife, reportedly intends to wind up Fever Ray after this brief tour. If so, she's going out with a bang – no, make that a distorted clang. Here, the music was the aural equivalent of wading through something dank and viscous, with Dreijer Andersson's half-submerged vocals providing a humanish touch. The first few numbers set the scene: illuminated mainly by a dozen lampstands that rendered the musicians blurry silhouettes, Fever Ray droned through If I Had a Heart and Concrete Walls, icy and aloof.
For all the iciness, there was a beating heart in there: the wavering synth note that pierced Seven sounded vulnerable; so did the keyboardist who, on a cover of Peter Gabriel's Mercy Street, created his own beat by clapping his hands. Dreijer Andersson, too, had moments when her hands dangled awkwardly, reminding you there was a human under the witchy robes. But these glimpses of normality did little to break the spell. When they left after Coconut, not having said a word to the audience all night, mesmerised fans shuffled out without even calling for an encore.