Plunge

Endlessly innovative--check the skittering, robotic violin on Red Trails, played by Sara Parkman--Plunge befits the return of an iconic creative voice. Dreijer’s politics are written on her body, and she’s asking you to dive in. You won’t need telling twice.

Beyond its aggressive peaks, there is also true beauty here, and even nuggets of stark synth-pop that call back to her past work.

This is a record that revels in the chaos of electronic music, its crazed rhythms and its infectious grooves.

Plunge is riskier than anything she has made before. It is sometimes harsh, often dissonant, frequently audacious.

It never feels like Dreijer is playing catch-up. Plunge is the natural next step, a realization of impulses that have long lain dormant, or at least unrecognized.

She seems a lot happier, or at least more energetic and outgoing, coming into second album Plunge. But that only seems to bring her up against more frustrations in the world around her, which are wrought vividly throughout.

Though it’s essentially yelled through a megaphone atop a weird, gaudy castle, it’s music that provokes a response because of how immediate it feels.

Piercing, heated, Fever Ray is taking no prisoners. [Mar 2018, p.97]

Peder Mannerfelt, Paula Temple and NÍDIA are among the producers who worked on ‘Plunge’, bringing 150bpm batida rhythms and searing rave stabs to one of 2017’s most thrilling LPs.

Female defiance and desire in a glossy, dystopic package. [Jan 2018, p.77]

The journey to dive into commitment that Dreijer takes her listeners on with Plunge boasts more moods and colors than Fever Ray's debut, or any single Knife album; ultimately, it's some of her most powerful work with yet.

The electronic work is fantastic throughout Plunge, never adhering to presets and making full use of every beat, burst and throb. When coupled with Dreijer’s slick, razor-sharp vocal you have a monster of a record that gets more impressive with every listen.

A reawakening to be reckoned with. [Jan 2018, p.21]

This is a joyous artistic rebirth, its creator shaking her tail feathers, pushing her own boundaries and immersed in emotion and whim brought out from within.

Plunge feel vibrant and more alive. There are crucial moments on the album where Dreijer slows things down a bit to let everything sink in. Even on the quieter moments, however, the mood of the album is deeply human.

Dreijer has cemented her place within alternative music's dynasty, and it's refreshing to hear an outwardly queer and fiercely political artist convey a clear message without having the music, performance or reception fall over the potential weight of those themes. For as much as Plunge quite clearly contains these themes, it can and will be enjoyed as a universally creditable piece of brilliantly constructed art, and that is Dreijer's real success here.

It might be less daring than some of the other hankerings, but there’s no room for emotional snobbery on Plunge, no victory that’s not worth celebrating: those seized, stolen intimacies she’s grubbed around for, the flashes of desire and flushes of pleasure, are things to be savoured.

Fever Ray’s first new music in eight years finds Karin Dreijer (she seems to have lost the Andersson) in fierce form.

Plunge is a worthy addition to Dreijer’s career discography, and fans of Fever Ray and the Knife are sure to enjoy it. It’s an energetic and erotic record that may very well soundtrack some of the freakier parties you attend this fall. Still, it doesn’t capture the full scope of Dreijer’s ambition.