Music
Fever Ray's Band of Insiders
Swedish musician Fever Ray has built a career cloaked in mystery. But behind the scenes on her current tour, her crew reveals a place of artistic freedom, open collaboration and natural kindness.
Pre-show dance session
© Alexa Vachon
Fever Ray presents one of the most inscrutable fronts in music. Karin Dreijer was a gothic shaman on her self-titled debut album, from 2009, her face shrouded by capes and corpse paint; at Sweden’s P3 Guld Awards in 2010, the Stockholm-based artist collected the award for Best Dance Artist while made up to resemble a melted Claymation figure, fleshy folds of “skin” cascading down her face. Interviews were cryptic and rare, the music equally terse: a claustrophobic battle cry about the isolation of motherhood.
When Dreijer re-emerged in 2017 — divorced and minus the surname Andersson — the project had opened up like a Venus flytrap. Her face appeared on the cover of second album "Plunge," but she stared nonchalantly from between bloody rivulets that spelled “Fever Ray” across her cheeks and chin. "Plunge" was clubbier and more confrontational than its predecessor, laying bare Dreijer’s newly explored queerness and desire in terms so frank — “I want to run my fingers up your pussy,” she declares on “To the Moon and Back” — that it stood as a challenge to sexual repression (and a call to arms for the liberated few who have escaped it).
Whether as one half of the Knife with brother Olof or solo, Dreijer has always fiercely guarded her privacy, and even sought to bamboozle. (The Knife’s last tour, for their 2013 album "Shaking the Habitual," was so heavily theoretical and anti-hierarchical that even audiences used to the pair’s provocations almost mutinied.) Yet behind the scenes on the Fever Ray tour, as it passed through Europe in March, Dreijer cultivated an atmosphere of total transparency: of community, compassion, freedom and empowerment among her predominantly — and defiantly — female performers and crew.
Dreijer lends a hand
© Alexa Vachon
In an industry that continually struggles with gender diversity, Dreijer is smashing boundaries, breaking free of the patriarchy and creating an enterprise that is driven by women and individuals not bound by gender. According to her team, who shared their uncensored thoughts before taking the stage in London, the results are radical.
It's so nice to play with strong women that give you the freedom to express yourself.
“I feel really comfortable with myself,” says Diva Cruz, one of the show’s two drummers. “When you’re with guys, you have to show what you can [do], but here it’s so nice to play with strong women that give you the freedom to express yourself and to feel what you want. And to see that there are so many incredible artists, with the lights, the sound and everything: There’s so much kindness and power.”
Performer Helena Guttara
© Alexa Vachon
London’s Troxy theater sits in Limehouse, a poorly connected borough in an easterly kink of the Thames. The area is industrial, the only signs of life between the train station and the venue being a pub, some convenience stores, a gay sauna and bored schoolchildren. The theater’s lavish art deco décor speaks to a different age; the Fever Ray cohort liken its frilly tiers to a giant cake. Down a backstage corridor, performer Helena Gutarra is FaceTiming her kids, while the skeletal crew runs through last-minute checks, clicking the neon stage lights scattered across the backdrop through their rainbow hues.
The "Plunge" tour started life more than nine months ago. Dreijer knew she wanted to hire only women or non-binary people, or as many as the male-heavy music industry would allow. (There are four men on the tour and nine women, including truck driver Jessica Thorzén.) She first turned to performers she knew: Dancer Maryam Nikandish was part of the "Shaking the Habitual tour"; drummer Lili Zavala was hired for the first Fever Ray tour after responding to Dreijer’s post on a listserv for female musicians that’s famous in Sweden.
Nikandish introduced dancer Gutarra to the fold: “She told me, Karin is looking for someone with a strong voice who loves to stand in the middle of the stage, who loves that kind of feeling,” she says cheekily, perched on the arm of the couch backstage.
“She found the right person to do that!” says keyboard player Miko Hansson, who joined the tour through Zavala, as did Diva Cruz, who plays with her in a salsa band.
Drummer Diva Cruz
© Alexa Vachon
On the last Fever Ray tour, Zavala was the only live musician; everything else was played to backing tracks. When Dreijer invited her to join this production, she assented on the condition that everything would be live, not just drums. “She was like, ‘What? How?’” says Zavala, pulling a face. “I said, yeah, we can do it! We listen on the beats, we play live.” She mimics Dreijer’s enthusiastic response.
“All of us musicians thought, if we’re gonna do 60 shows of this, we want to play, otherwise it’s not going to be fun,” Hansson adds. “Even though it’s much more work at first, it will last longer and be a better show — we can pick up the crowd’s energy, and the other way around.”
Rather than presenting a top-down concept for the tour, Dreijer invited the five other performers to help her conceptualize the show. Nikandish says Dreijer prefers to see Fever Ray as a collective effort more than a solo project.
“We had a meeting together, heard the music together, then we talked about the imagination, the songs,” Zavala says.
“The dramaturgy,” Nikandish adds, “what it would look like, what you want people to feel. It’s like on the "Shaking the Habitual" tour, very lust-driven, doing what you think is fun and pulling it off together.”
“It feels like we’ve all been given space and a free hand to think, ‘How do we want to do this?’” Hansson says. “Musically, we can try out what we wanna do, then Karin is super clear with what she likes. There’s been a lot of time for testing things and finding out how we can put a part of ourselves into it — this goes for the lighting, the music, the guys in the front. We’ve been given a lot of confidence.”
The show's primary ethos is sexual: "The right to your own body. The right to your sexuality, your own gender."
The show’s primary ethos is sexual: “The right to your own body,” Nikandish continues. “The right to your sexuality, your own gender — being free from the male gaze, the patriarchal structures that oppress sexuality is the one big topic that we have discussed.”
As conceived by Dreijer and creative director Martin Falck, each performer was given a character — eco warrior, anarchic scientist, fashion hag, dumpster diver and Gutarra’s shapely bodybuilder outfit, with its cartoonish foam pectorals — all lonely avengers who find community together “and have fun with each other,” says Nikandish. “As we do!” Zavala says. “On the stage and after the stage.”
Diva Cruz backstage
© Alexa Vachon
In many ways, the Fever Ray tour is as unconventional as the artist at its center. Five out of the six performers are around age 40 (Hansson is 30), and four of them have kids — this is uncommon, says Gutarra. “It’s like something new is happening! And so it is very important to do this tour.”
The importance of being predominantly women on a production celebrating queer, female sexual agency has struck a chord with them. They all reference a review of "Plunge" in a Swedish newspaper that questioned the legitimacy of a 42-year-old woman from the Stockholm suburbs expressing her sexual desires.
“There was a lot of prejudice when the album came out, but I was like, I love to be here, because I am over 40, I have kids, I live in the suburbs, so I can identify with this,” Zavala says. “Why can I not talk about my sexuality? Why?”
“This old woman who wants to have sex!” shrieks Nikandish in mock outrage.
“Definitely as a queer person into weird, kinky sex, sure, I’m into the message of the show,” says wry lighting designer Sarah Landau, who has worked with M83, Tegan and Sara and A Perfect Circle among others. “It does feel like I’m much more aligned with my true self being on this tour than I am with 44 bros doing stadium-rock tours.”
Sound Engineer Laura Davis
© Julie Glassberg
“And it’s so nice to walk into venues and the house people are like, ‘Oh, you’re doing front of house, you’re doing lights ... oh, all women!’ ” says sound engineer Laura Davis. “The confusion is just amazing.”
Plus, adds Landau, “The bus smells better.”
The tour makeup and message may be radical, but its logistics seem plainly logical: Every day there’s a meeting before soundcheck to air technical or emotional issues. Prior to the U.K. leg of the tour, everyone took a week off “to hug our kids and lovers,” as Dreijer wrote on Instagram. On days off, she’s taken the performers and female crew members to Turkish saunas for scrubs and steaming; they’ve taken boat trips, danced kizomba in Paris, used the Happy Cow app to find vegetarian restaurants and practiced yoga and meditation together.
The budget necessitates a somewhat skeletal production, meaning that the slim crew don’t get a moment to themselves; one limitation of Landau’s lighting design was that she had to be able to assemble everything herself. But Dreijer is conscious of the pressures she puts on her employees. “If we’re working too hard, she’ll come out and make sure we’ve got lunch, or make us tea and bring it into the venue,” says Davis, sounding touched.
“They always thank us, which is really nice,” Landau says. “An artist thanking you for your work on a random day — it doesn’t really happen. And this happens all the time.”
None of this happens all the time, apparently: the Fever Ray tour is dysfunctionally functional. Taking a week off to let people meet their emotional needs and family responsibilities is bad business, says tour manager Lotje Horvers, who has also worked with Robyn, M83 and the Knife, but it’s an expense Dreijer is willing to incur.
Makeshift Avenger
© Alexa Vachon
Horvers first worked with Dreijer on the Knife's "Shaking the Habitual" tour and was surprised to be interviewed about her politics for the job — also something that never really happens. But it’s a practice she’s since used in her own work. She interviewed a merchandise vendor for this tour, who didn’t understand why she was being quizzed about what feminism meant to her: Unsurprisingly, she didn’t get the position.
This level of care and respect has resulted in Dreijer’s group feeling genuinely empowered. “I feel like I’m taking up more space in the room,” Hansson says. “And that’s been kind of painful, almost, to discover, that normally I back up a little bit more when I play with mostly guys — nice guys, but we still take different roles.” She adds that being on tour has challenged her worldview, particularly concerning sexuality. “I really enjoy it because I get to learn new stuff, and rethink stuff, and I can do that in an environment that feels safe.”
It's not six women on stage making a protest. We are here to give you good energy.
Truck driver Thorzén praises a tour environment “that’s not so macho,” while Zavala remarks on its powerful energy. “Because men think of drums as masculine, they think I can’t do it, and I come back like, ‘Yes I can’ — I make the bad energy positive,” she says. “But with this tour, it’s not six women on stage making a protest. Instead, we dance. We are here to give you good energy.”
In keeping with the tour’s sensibility, the pre-show preparations don’t resemble any kind of rock ’n’ roll bacchanal. Makeup is applied, fiddly costumes wriggled into, then the performers warm up by dancing to salsa music and sharing some prosecco.
Hear Gutarra roar
© Alexa Vachon
Inside the theater, now packed, the Troxy’s illuminated signs display a request from Fever Ray to “kindly leave your phones and cameras in your pockets, share this moment with us.” They also ask that “tall people please stand back and give space to the shorter ones.” It concludes with what Horvers calls the “ethos of the tour”: “Women to the front.”
The care that Dreijer has put into nurturing her employees manifests in the show. Unusually for a London gig on a Tuesday night, the crowd dances — exuberantly, too, responding to the jungle and samba influences that writhe through the "Plunge" material thanks to Zavala and Cruz. Landau’s intuitive lighting washes each performer in her own hue, giving their gaudy costumes a superhuman aura. On stage, they look like makeshift Avengers ready to take down the patriarchy: Gutarra, Nikandish and Dreijer leading the battle cry, Cruz and Zavala beating the drums of war.
“We are so alive, we’re there, we’re dancing, we’re with you, there’s drums — what is not authentic about this moment?” Nikandish had said before the show. Unwittingly she was speaking for a lot more than just the spectacle playing out on the stage.
Fever Ray launches her North American tour at the Red Bull Music Festival in New York on May 12-13.
For tickets and more info on the month-long series of events, visit nyc.redbullmusicfestival.com