They say that solo projects are merely an exercise in vanity. A chance for a tempered tunesmith to make music free from the constraints of their band/producer/manager. Well, in most cases that’s true, but for Fever Ray (known by her parents as Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife) it’s a chance to experiment in stripped back, pulsing beats and to make dance tracks you can’t really dance to.
Fever Ray is a record that’s desolate, cold, isolated and eerily uplifting all at the same time. Andersson’s experiments with sound yield some truly memorable moments in ‘When I Grow Up’ and ‘Triangle Walks’ and as a whole it sounds a bit like Tegan and Sara gone techno, which is no bad thing in this writer’s opinion.

Key Track: ‘When I Grow Up’ ]