Some songs don’t just play — they haunt the margins of your memory, like smoke from a long-forgotten fire. “Fever,” the latest offering from Portuguese dream weaver Cristóvam, is one of those rare tracks that feels less like a single and more like a whispered confession from another realm.
Cristóvam, who first rose to global attention with the pandemic anthem “Andrà Tutto Bene,” has always had a knack for pulling hope from the rubble of human experience. But on “Fever,” taken from his upcoming third album Desert of Fools (out October 10 via V2 Records), he dives deeper into the psychic limbo between chaos and salvation. And he doesn’t go it alone: teaming up with Australian indie-folk outfit Boy & Bear, he crafts a lush, shimmering soundscape where sorrow and transcendence dance in an endless, hypnotic waltz.
The first time you hear it, “Fever” feels like a déjà vu dream — half-remembered, half-invented. Guitars echo like abandoned radio signals across the outback while Cristóvam’s voice, rich and raspy with emotional gravitas, drifts through the ether. It’s not just music; it’s the sound of an artist chasing the mirage of home across two continents and coming back with sand still clinging to his boots.
The accompanying video, directed by Diogo Rola, is an otherworldly odyssey through abandoned landscapes and static-fuzzed televisions, a visual metaphor for the connection and distance woven into every note. Cristóvam stumbles through this surreal dreamworld, searching for Boy & Bear — a pilgrimage toward musical kinship, or maybe just a reflection of the dislocated heart beating at the core of Desert of Fools.
If you know anything about Cristóvam’s story, you know it’s one of beautiful contradictions. He lives in the Azores — a windswept paradise far from the buzzing nerve centers of the music world — and yet he creates songs that resonate with the restlessness of modern existence. “When I’m not touring,” he admits, “I often feel like I’m in limbo, never fully in one place.” It’s this spiritual drift — the body grounded, the mind adrift — that gives Desert of Fools its aching, undeniable pulse.
“Fever” is the fever dream of a man who belongs nowhere and everywhere at once. A man who chooses connection over comfort, art over certainty. And in a world where so many artists shout for attention, Cristóvam does something far braver — he whispers his truth, and trusts that those meant to hear it will find their way through the static.
Desert of Fools promises to be Cristóvam’s most personal statement yet, a weathered love letter to displacement, longing, and the stubborn hope that somehow, somewhere, there’s a place where no one has to lose.
For now, “Fever” is the beacon on the horizon, flickering beautifully in the dusk. All you have to do is follow it.
–Lonnie Nabors
