There’s something very arrogant about the average gig, what with them generally featuring skinny white boys (as it’s normally them) deciding that although they clearly have little in the way of charisma and stage presence, they can command an audience’s attention (and money) by doing very little, mostly staring at their shoes and looking bored. Factor in the long waiting times where absolutely nothing happens, and that as soon as it looks like something will your view will probably be blocked by a sea of digital cameras and mobile phones held aloft as well as the ever increasing cost of tickets and listening to the record at home starts to seem like the much more preferable option. So thank god for Karin Dreijer Andersson’s Fever Ray persona and her determination to put on a good show. Despite her adamant claims that the show would be over last year, she’s seen sense, or been revealed to be a massive liar, and brought it back for another ‘last’ tour under the name, now upgrading the show with new costumes, more props (mostly a load more of the tacky old table lamps that appeared in the original version of show) and finally staging it in a venue with the capacity for her, and designer Andreas Nilsson, to realise their ambitions.
Support act Zola Jesus slink onto the stage with little fanfare, the stage has been lit in a low ultraviolet light since the audience entered the venue, and it doesn’t change for their set. Luckily there’s singer Nika Roza Danilova’s impressive voice to grab the audience’s attention, sounding like Florence (minus her machine) attempting a Siouxsie Sioux impression (or vice versa) over very loud synths played by a couple of fairly anonymous guys. Considering the sheer power of her voice, it’s surprising how timid, and diminutive the bleached blonde singer is, starting the evening with her head buried as far as it can be in a black cloak, although as the set goes on she gains a bit more confidence, stalking up and down the stage and at one point contemplating climbing a speaker stack. The only downside is that where their recorded output is full of subtlety, on such a large stage and played at such bone-rattling volumes, it starts to feel a bit samey after a while.
Following a rather quiet ‘Thank you, we are Zola Jesus’, the trio exit the stage, leaving the road crew to set up for the headliners. Which they do with an impressive amount of efficiency – everything in this set has been planned down to the smallest detail, more and more lights are set up on the stage so quickly that it’s as if they appear out of nowhere. And then, that’s it for about an hour, the house lights are kept at a dim level and the between set music on the PA system is only played intermittently meaning that there’s very little to keep the audience entertained. Occasionally another burst of smoke will be wafted out onto the stage to ensure that it’s constantly obscured by a layer of smog thick enough to rival that on the Mad Men set, which gives the show the rare distinction of having its own smell – where post-smoking ban gigs normally reek of sweat and overpriced lager, here the crowd get to experience lungfuls of the woody scent of a smoke machine.
After a few false starts, where it looks like something might happen but doesn’t, the stage is eventually plunged into darkness as the band take their places. And when the lights go up it’s difficult not to be struck by the initial sensation that the new costumes are particularly ugly and unpleasant – where before the band’s wore sinister clown outfits and shamanistic headdresses making the show look like a child’s dressing up box gone wrong, now the band are decked out in identical bald old man rubber masks and sober attire. If the filmic origins of the original design could be traced back to Ingmar Bergman’s sinister Scandinavian fantasies or David Lynch (after all, he was the one who originally demonstrated how terrifying kitsch lamp shades could be), the deliberately unconvincing masks now used by the band more closely resemble the fright-masked cast of Harmony Korine’s latest little-seen provocation Trash Humpers. However, as the set goes on the costumes begin to make more sense, the comically large ears, and the sight of the band members enthusiastically banging drums, hammering synths or shaking rain sticks gives them the look of a group of trained chimps, and details emerge that reveal the differences between them – one has a plastic sword sticking in his back, another is hunchbacked and the sole female member of the backing band sports a hideously old fashioned blouse and plaid skirt, like something your granny would wear (or rather your granddad would if he was a transvestite).
Also importantly Andersson doesn’t settle for one of these costumes herself. Starting the show hunched over at the back of the stage, as she moves forward through the smoke and gloom, her costume reveals itself little by little until it becomes clear that she’s wearing a dark, gigantic head-dress, This couple with her gesticulations through the on-stage fog give her the look of a particularly malicious triangle (as fans of Silent Hill will attest the most frightening of shapes), until, in the best horror film tradition, by the end she’s finally revealed the full extent of her costume, including the face hole cut out through which reveals a hideously deformed prosthetic face (the lips are her own, but the only way that her normally pretty and conventional looks could resemble the rest of this is if she had been in a terrible accident or contracted a horrible disease at some point in the recent past). At first disturbing and unpleasant, later Andersson’s face becomes more amusing, and even childlike and innocent (with the dressing-up box feel of the last set and the lyrics about domestic discomfort, childhood is a central subject for the band) thanks to its cartoonishly simple and oversized features.
The laser show that so impressed with the band’s last shows is still present and correct (in fact it might very well be the exact same set up, including set list, as the previous lot, not that surprising really considering the fact that the band play the entire Fever Ray catalogue during the set), the precise programming of which doesn’t leave room for the band to interact with the audience or improvise. There are more than a few mistakes during the first couple of numbers but the band merely just power through, with even the presence of the technical crew on stage not allowed to ruin the spectacle too much what with them being shrouded head to to in black. Not that this lack of interaction is a bad thing, considering the distancing effect of the show’s design, it would be wrong for the band to stop and chat to us. The exception to this comes in the moments between songs when the stage is thrown into pitch black (giving the impression that each song is a carefully arranged peek into the Fever Ray world) and the band are given the opportunity to let loose with their instruments – the pulsating intro to opening number If I Had a Heart is stretched to near breaking point, and the harsh and spiky I’m Not Done culminates in both Andersson and one of her band mates strapping on guitars and unleashing a wave of distorted noise.
Although it’s not the sort of thing many bands could pull off, hopefully this creative approach to a live set will be inspire other acts in the future to try being a bit more adventurous (after all, it would be a shame for the use of prosthetics and costumes in pop music to be pretty much the sole reserve of shock rockers like Gwar, and more recently the laughably terrible Eurovision-winners Lordi). Further efforts could be made by Andersson and Nilsson to make the long waiting period a bit more interesting (and of course some more songs next time would be nice) but hopefully Fever Ray will go back on her/their word once more and roll the set out again, with even more wild and outrageous costumes next time.
