Plunge (album)
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| Studio album by Fever Ray | ||||
| Released | 27 October 2017 | |||
| Length | 46:56 | |||
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Plunge is the second studio album by Fever Ray, an alias of Swedish musician Karin Dreijer. It was released on 27 October 2017 through Rabid Records. It is her first in eight years, following her 2009 eponymous debut. The album was preceded by the lead single "To the Moon and Back", which was released a week before the album.
The album received acclaim from music critics, who praised its directly political and sexual themes alongside deconstructed club beats and catchy electronic hooks.
Plunge was surprise released on 27 October 2017 without prior announcement. It was released a week after the release of the lead single, "To the Moon and Back". Prior to the release of the single in 20 October, Dreijer shared two teaser videos titled "Switch Seeks Same" and "A New Friend" on 16 and 18 October, respectively. Both teasers included the word "Plunge", leading to speculations of a new album. The first teaser sampled the songs "Red Trails" and "An Itch", while the second teaser sampled "This Country". The album will be released physically on vinyl and CD on 23 February 2018.Plunge was largely recorded in Dreijer's studio in collaboration with producers Paula Temple, Deena Abdelwahed, Nídia, Tami T, Peder Mannerfelt, and Johannes Berglund.
In February 2018, Dreijer will be kicking off her European tour in support of the album. Dates of the tour are posted on her official website.
Plunge contains aggressive beats and synths, and showcases a more varied sound than that of Fever Ray. Dreijer's voice is also notably not hidden behind pitch-shifting as it was on Fever Ray, but instead, is "sharpened and pushed high in the mix, the better to emphasize her strange, elastic, playful diction."Pitchfork stated that the album "feels much more manic" and "conflicted" than her debut, while noting that in oppose to the numbness and "penumbral chill" of Fever Ray, Plunge "puts the heat and light back into her alias: the fever, the radiance, the beams emanating from red-ringed eyes." Lyrically, the album focuses on themes of love and desire with a striking candor. It features Dreijer's most verbose, dense and direct lyrics, and was said to be "political in a way Dreijer has not been before."
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 88, based on 20 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".Pitchfork writer Philip Sherburne called Plunge a "thrillingly restless album", and said it's "riskier than anything she has made before. It is sometimes harsh, often dissonant, frequently audacious." Nina Corcoran of Consequence of Sound said Dreijer "pushes herself to new limits, and it feels entirely individualistic," continuing: "The instrumentation and Dreijer's primal delivery of the lyrics make Plunge a gripping follow-up that upstages its predecessor. Fever Ray made you self-aware of your mind. Plunge makes you self-aware of your body, what it's capable of, and how good it feels to move in your skin." Adam Turner-Heffer from Drowned in Sound wrote, "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."
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