Radical Romantics

What makes Radical Romantics, like the best of Dreijer’s work, a cut above merely great pop is its subversive streak.

Scrupulous in its detail, Radical Romantics is both innovative and entertaining, showcasing an original and unique spin on nuanced electro rock with seductive grooves. [Apr - Jul 2023, p.80]

Pop hooks and club-ready rhythms warp with bubblegum plasticity from track to track, never repeating but luxuriating in the excess of their own ideas. [Apr 2023, p.66]

Compared to the preceding Plunge, this new album is more adventurous, perhaps, attempting to summon diverse and emotionally challenging experiences of a relationship. Depending on a listener’s experience and expectations, Radical Romantics can be found as uncomfortable as it is accommodating. The album tackles its subject with an attitude that exudes boldness and acceptance.

On the most fully realized vision of the Fever Ray project yet, Dreijer unspools some of their best lyrics and pop songs since The Knife's 2007 smash "Heartbeats.

With Radical Romantics we see a distinct shift away from the idea of linear songs, and rapidly towards a 360 soundscape – all encompassing, visceral and beautifully overwhelming.

Mostly Radical Romantics is witty, inquisitive about physical and psychological relationships, and less austere than before. The songs produced with Olof are excellent.

As a consistent work of songs gestating over many years, Radical Romantics is a remarkable composite of Dreijer as they exist in 2023 and of the emotions that brought them here.

Dreijer often seems more relaxed and more forthcoming on Radical Romantics than on Fever Ray's previous albums. Fans may have anticipated another epic like Plunge, but the more approachable, more personal choices Dreijer makes here are often just as risky and just as rewarding.

Radical Romantics is as joyfully alive with sound as anything that Dreijer has created in their three decades of music making.

Radical Romantics offers enough detail, emotion, and vigour to tide us over until the next inevitable shapeshifting moment.

The brightest and most subversive moments on the album come when Dreijer enlist blunt lyrics and wobbling instrumentals to articulate hard-to-explain emotions flawlessly.

On ‘Radical Romantics’, Fever Ray posits the idea of love as an imperative condition for human function, and probes into both its darkest corners as well as the simple, mortal desire for affection, producing a fascinating study of electro-pop in the meantime.

Thematically, Radical Romantics can be seen as a mellow follow-up to the angrier, gender-politics-driven Plunge. Instead, it celebrates self-exploration. [Apr 2023, p.88]

On Radical Romantics, Dreijer wears their heart on their sleeve and delivers their stories of love and lust with classic Fever Ray conviction.

The album may not be more than the sum of its parts, but thankfully those parts are packed full of enough weird and wonderful sounds to ensure another excellent Fever Ray album.

Fever Ray's records may be less boldly subversive than The Knife's, but there are plenty of artful thrills and pleasures here. [Apr 2023, p.26]