Consumer Guide Album

Fever Ray: Fever Ray [Rabid/Mute, 2009]
You say pretty, beaty, bummed-out electronic background music isn't your thing? How about ethereal tracks with a firm grasp on reality--and also discernible feelings about reality? On a solo debut by the woman who's the reason you liked that Knife album against your better judgment? These are not songs about how depressed Karin Dreijer Andersson is, though the long winter does get Scandinavians down. They're songs about the destructiveness of greed, the difficulties of nurturance, and the very real adjustments every human must make from the dreams of youth to the constrictions of adulthood, which in my lifetime have never been worse than they are right now. As good as it gets: "Work as I've been told/In return I get money/Small feet in the hall/And I long for every moment." A-