The title of Icona Pop’s fourth album traces back to a curious tale. A friend who was having a rough time went to see a shaman in New York, and he asked whether she truly wanted to live inside her own body. “It’s frozen. You have to dance and eat spicy food to bring it back to life,” he explained, which gave birth to the track Ritual. Aino Jawo and Caroline Hjelt liked the advice so much that they included it in the title track, in a collaboration with Daya.
In that first half of the album, Icona Pop reveal a more mysterious and darker facet of their outlook on their hit “I Love It.” “Hurt” acts as an intro, not rushing to yield a single, instead focusing on cultivating atmosphere. At this point in the record, the duo grapples with themes like repair and belonging, and they lean away from EDM, weaving in nods to electronic artists such as Caribou or Flume. This approach is evident, for instance, in the single “Dance to This,” which explores what one’s city can signify to a person.
They even strike gold with what could be their strongest pop single in ages, “Butterfly Feelings.” There they simply speak of love, but with so much charm that you find yourself rechecking the credits for Charli XCX, this time without success. “I love you from the waist down, let’s go to my place now,” they chant with slyness and immediacy.
Things grow more complicated thereafter. “Mad Love” still recalls that Icona Pop are countrywomen of The Knife in their use of synthesizers, but the compositions lose their mystery in favor of bland melodies and less engaging stories. “Cooler” offers no intrigue whatsoever, and “Yellow Top” says everything with its title. Caroline Hjelt wonders why her ex used her Netflix password with his new girlfriend in the lackluster “Didn’t Mean It Like That,” a second half that feels almost like hearing nothing at all.
In the final stretch they regain momentum with “Foreverness.” Their sound becomes more enigmatic again, perhaps reminiscent of Röyksopp in a track that, not by chance, has drawn more attention than the earlier songs, despite being the one that takes the longest to appear in the sequence. It was the path Icona Pop needed to explore, after only four albums—though really three—in fifteen years of career.
