The movie for “What They Phone Us,” Karin Dreijer’s to start with new music in five yrs as Fever Ray, opens on Dreijer as a sallow workplace drone, greenish circles beneath vacant eyes, 50 %-eaten watermelon lying masticated on their desk. Then, they vacation by using desk chairs to darker, torchlit realms, the workplace instantly yielding to the forest. By the video’s close, Dreijer is lying in a pile of Xeroxes of their individual facial area and inciting their coworkers into a Matrix Reloaded–style bacchanal. Like every Dreijer visible, it hypnotizes with no quiet outlining alone, but the overarching topic looks to be yearning from nonsecular imprisonment.
In the earlier, Dreijer has relished transforming on their own into a mournful bridge troll, a growling demon, an avenging angel. But on “What They Call Us” they audio like no one but themselves, singing the slow, stepwise melody in their tremulous reduced range. “First, I’d like to say that I’m sorry,” they sing, husky-voiced, eyes burning out of the camera. “The individual who came below was damaged/Can you correct it, can you treatment?” Co-generated with their brother, the Knife’s Olof Dreijer, the song seems to be holding its breath for the answer: The bass drum reverberates into the superior-ceilinged room, though a flanging keyboard supplies the neuron crackles of a nervous procedure seething with require and damage.