Fever Ray
Hammersmith Apollo

SWEDISH artist Karin Dreijer, formerly one-half of brother-and-sister duo The Knife and now performing under the alias Fever Ray, is something of a contemporary music legend.

Their highly conceptualised, sporadic releases have explored themes of identity and sexuality — with a healthy smattering of punk-ethos — while Karin’s persona is frequently displayed in anonymous and androgynous costumes, masks and body paint.

Embarking on their first tour since 2018 — dubbed There's No Place I’d Rather Be — the gender-fluid experimentalist presents choice cuts from latest love-inspired album Radical Romantics.

A striking presence in an oversized white suit and face paint, Karin launches into first single off that record What They Call Us, their first collaboration with brother Olof Dreijer since The Knife. Moody and downtempo, the song exhibits an unmistakably rich production that includes steelpan samples, techno beats and ambient tones that drift and soar like Vangelis’s Blade Runner.

This marriage of dark and light is apparent in much of the album, with the summery steelpan sound returning in full on the lusty Kandy, while the Trent Reznor-produced Even It Out threatens to cut up a school bully over the sounds of an industrial beat.

There's a sense of gothic horror to proceedings, as Karin and the band dance and cavort around a Victorian lampost — at one point all adorned in black latex capes.

Other times it feels like a haunted disco as the stage lighting occasionally explodes into colour amid energetic beats on tunes like Carbon Dioxide and New Utensils.

Fan faves When I Grow Up and To The Moon And Back provide a welcome tonic in a show that might not have the electrifying chutzpah of the Plunge tour, but marks a more mature and introspective direction for Fever Ray.

Fever Ray will play End of the Road festival in the autumn. Details: feverray.com