Troxy, London
Swedish art rocker Karin Dreijer is best when she translates experimental music to the stage with a bang
As six cartoonishly styled women stride on stage, each taking a moment to flex in the neon strobing like a pro-wrestling heel, it’s hard to square the camp spectacle with Fever Ray’s last appearance in the UK. In 2010, the woman then known as Karin Dreijer Anderssonperformed her self-titled debut in darkness, engulfed by dry ice and wearing heavy robes that obscured her face. It made a feverish album about the claustrophobic loneliness of motherhood even more harrowing. In the intervening years, much has changed for Stockholm’s Dreijer – divorcing and reclaiming her name, and embarking on a Tinder-abetted quest into her queerness as documented on a second Fever Ray album.
Never mind nuclear family; last year’s Plunge is about chosen family uniting to celebrate freedom and pleasure: “Still, we’re pushing what’s possible / A queer healing / Mom just tired of feeling,” as Dreijer sings on Falling. Hence the homemade costumes – bug-eyed anarchist scientists, cat burglar, dumpster diver, fashion victim, preening bodybuilder with bulbous foam pecs – which together resemble a shambolic Avengers primed to topple the patriarchy. The Hulk and a blue-haired succubus flank Dreijer, shaven-headed and with zombie-pink eyes, who often cedes the floor and microphone to them in a characteristic refusal of ego that also distinguished her performances with duo the Knife (and almost started riots on their aggressively loose Shaking the Habitual tour). The trio play jester and corrupter, mugging gleefully and grinding in slow-motion against each other as if enacting a set piece from an aerobics-themed porno.
Related: Fever Ray: on pleasure, patriarchy and political revolution
Continue reading...by Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian
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