Fever Ray – The Forum, London 05/12/09

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The Kentish Town Forum will never win a prize for the world’s best venue, its dire acoustics being the ruin of many a promising gig but on occasion not even its inherent rubbishness can entirely ruin the last ever performance by Fever Ray. The first sign that this’ll be a good night is the excellent support set by Múm’s Hildur Gudnadottir. Adorned with a stately set of white feathered antlers, the majestic Icelander employed nothing more than a cello and loop pedals to form solemn multi-layered compositions of great majesty and depth. Drawing a wonderfully rich timbre from her instrument, her work may have been a little hard going on occasion, but for the most part it was captivating.

Then, the Forum is suddenly consumed by smoke, the scent of incense wafts through the air and two incandescent lasers pierce the gloom. Old fashioned lamps are arranged around the stage, and start glowing in sync with each other. The band stalk onto the stage quietly, mere silhouettes amongst the fog. Karin Dreijer Andersson’s voice is all but inaudible for opener ‘If I Had A Heart’, but as the night goes on the full force of her unnervingly sinister vocals chills the heart.

As with her other project The Knife, Fever Ray’s percussion is an integral part of proceedings and they’re wonderfully recreated for the live show. Whilst, at times, the performance comes across as the album plus lasers, when the drummer is given full rein (eg. ‘Seven’ and the marvelous ‘I’m Not Done’) the show crackles with an energy that’s sadly absent elsewhere. The visuals elicit an alienating atmosphere that distances the artists from their audience; though this would be an impediment for most acts, it suits the bleakness of Fever Ray to a tee. On the rare occasions they’re visible, their strange costumes look like they’ve been retrieved from the wilder recesses of Terry Gilliam’s imagination; mostly though, they’re cloaked behind a near-impenetrable fug of smoke and strobe. The lasers are an effective touch too; as well as proffering the visual eye-candy the rest of the set seeks to deny, there’s something about their sterile, coldly mathematical arcs that fits perfectly with the music.

It’s a shame that, despite being a Saturday night, the London audience never really came to life, it was nonetheless a fitting, if not spectacular finale to one of the better side-projects of recent years (and one that has done nothing to dampen my dearly-held hope that The Knife will make a return to these shores one day).

Photos by Anika Mottershaw