Hello and welcome. This is the Pitchfork Review. I'm Ryan Domble, features editor at the website.

Pooja and Jeremy are out this week. And today I'm joined by a couple of my wisest, most trusted coworkers, senior editor

Anna Gatsa, and contributing editor Phil Sherburn. Hey, guys. Hey, Ryan. Hi. So today we're talking

about a couple albums from two of our favorite eccentric artists who

we've been following for quite a while.

Both of them are known for pushing boundaries of genre, gender, identity, and pretty much

everything else that you could possibly think of.

Radical Romantics is the third solo record by Karen Dreher, who performs as Fever Ray,

and Eve's Tumor's latest is called, Praise a Lord who Choose, but which does not consume

parentheses or simply hot between worlds. Let's start with Viva Ray.

Phil, can you give us a little background on their wonderful and bizarre career thus far?

Yeah, so Karen Dreyer's from Stockholm, Sweden, and they've been experimenting with electronic

pop for more than 20 years.

They were first known as a member of the Knife alongside their brother Olaf Dreher.

The Knife started out making relatively sunny music like their very, very, very popular song, Heartbeats.

One night to be confused, one night to speed of truth, We had a promise made

For hats and men away

But they quickly became really mysterious sort of pop provocateurs,

Especially with their album Silent Shout.

They wore masks, they published manifestos, they played with gender gender roles and basically subverted every hierarchy that they could get their hands on.

When I think of their sort of hijinks over the years, the one that always comes to mind is an award show in 2010, where Fever Ray was accepting a trophy.

And they came up to the mic wearing a red hood that they pulled

...