Live At Troxy

About

Fever Ray’s live album, Live at Troxy, captures a night of the exuberant collaboration Dreijer fostered with the Plunge stage production. While the Shaking the Habitual Tour made extensive use of pre-recorded backing track, allowing the performers to dance freely and lip-sync to the music, Dreijer opted on the Plunge tour to have everything played live. Physical percussion bolsters live-triggered drum machines on the record, adding volume and dimensionality to old and new Fever Ray song. Dreijer’s 2009 self-titled debut as Fever Ray sprung from a place of isolation and deep introspection. A few songs from that album appear on Live at Troxy, but they are newly reinvigorated: They sound like memories of isolation now dispelled by having found community. “When I Grow Up” and “I’m Not Done” were both significantly revamped for the Plunge tour, spiked with higher tempo, gulping vocal sample, and newly colorful percussion. These new incarnations fit right in alongside the playful offerings from Plunge, but even Fever Ray’s iciest cuts fill with new warmth here. The drumbeats tower on “Keep the Streets Empty for Me,” while synthesizer figures twirl irreverently. It’s as though the speaker has finished a long nighttime walk home only to find their apartment filled with friend. And the powerfully chilling “If I Had a Heart” sounds like Dreijer making peace with past selves: They sing live and unaffected over a recording of their pitch-shifted performance from 10 years ago, voice cracking and rasping in ways the processed vocal didn’t allow. Even in their studio version, most songs from Plunge sound like they were written to be played in a club full of people—it’s an album about fucking your way out of your shell, and it lends itself to joyful, gay celebration. Live, tracks like “To the Moon and Back” and “Wanna Sip” flare with life and color, animated by the urgency and risk of live performance. When the drums crash in at the beginning of “IDK About You,” and the synths peal and squiggle, you can almost see the band members grinning at each other. On Plunge, Dreijer openly celebrated their queerness for the first time, never losing sight of the fact that even romantic relationships don’t transpire in a vacuum. To grow close to another person is to open yourself to the world in which they’re enmeshed, to participate in the broader social fabric. Plunge expertly traces the threads connecting the sexual and the political, the bond between two people in a couple and the bonds that link a community. On Live at Troxy, we get the chance to hear Fever Ray—a band, now—exalt all of that good human love as a collective, a chosen family thrilled to share their music and their play. .

via Last.fm

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →