The Knife - Shaking The Habitual Review
rating:4.5
The Knife are an act that continues to evolve. Sure, the evolutionary steps to get here have taken them sometime, given that their last studio album was released in 2006, but our own evolution didnt happen overnight you know? Alongside this evolution, and perhaps a key part in making it so or at least helping it along, The Knife steadily continue to get more, and more, bat-shit insane. Nowhere is that better exemplified than on the stopgap release in collaboration with Planningtorock and Mt. Sims that arrived in 2010, by the name of Tomorrow, In a Year. A four-way collaborative alt-opera commissioned by the Danish Hotel Pro Forma performance group for their opera based on Charles Darwins The Origin of Species. I couldnt begin to explain whilst trying to focus this review on their new album. A new album though, called Shaking The Habitual, arrived in my ears recently and yours soon, hopefully. A recap for those unfamiliar or casual; this is The Knifes fourth studio album, though many will be familiar with them from their second, Deep Cuts, onwards; The Knife is a brother and sister beat combo (Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson) that deal in a whole cavalcade of synthetic sounds; theyve had a couple of big indie hits including Pass This On, Silent Shout, We Share Our Mothers Health, Marble House and, the-must-have-made-them-loads-of-money-when-Jose-Gonzales-covered-it, Heartbeats.
Starting predominantly as a synthpop duo, with some more out-there eccentricities, the pair have been pushing their sound ever since then with further experimentations into world-rhythms, ambience, tension, sooo-many-synth-sounds and a much darker lean both sound-wise and stylistically. Something that came to head on their third album Silent Shout, which saw them looking like Venetian plague doctors by adorning crow masks, further warping their pop sensibilities with even more deeply treated vocals, extending song lengths and experimenting with sound and ambience. It is a stunning album. This follow-up is not an easy listen, but it is the logical evolution. For one thing the album is an epic, spanning two sides with an overall runtime of 90 minutes plus, boasting one 20 minute track and general song lengths of between 6 and 10 minutes there are four short songs, two of which are just-shy-of-a-minute, musical interludes and the other two are just over four minutes and thirty seconds. A none-too-common feat in todays attention deficit musical climate. This is not to say it is longwinded and overrun, but that is not to say that the hour and half plus is all easy listening and melody. There is a significant amount of ambient space on this record and it is as sprawling as it harrowing. http://youtu.be/W10F0ezCTIQ Thats not to say for every bleak soundscape there isnt a certified banger if you will, because within the experimentation there are still the haunting melodies, hypnotic rhythms and twisted pop elements that shone through on Silent Shout. The lead track, A Tooth for an Eye, for example at its main is an excursion into Afro-Caribbean rhythm building upon Afro-Caribbean rhythm under synthesized world melodies and Karins effected and unique vocal wails. Full of Fire at its core is freneticized but slowburning industrialized pop in among the extended song length and experimentation. Then on the second half of the album Networking is a techno-fuelled bad trip with its hypnotic pulse, massively treated coming-and-going wails and twitch laden noise-melody. Then theres the tracks that work the line between song and soundscape that let you get lost until theyre ready to find you. A Cherry on Top wisps and, yet, looms serenely as it slowly builds layers of wavering drones atop each other before hidden air-raid sirens and the creaking boughs of a ship subside into the dissonant yet somehow tender prangs of the main body to the song that sounds something like dying clocks. Another such track is Raging Lung that makes use of tribal rhythms, strings taught with tension, warped instrumental melodies and one of Karins strongest vocal performances on the album that is equal parts tender and contorted beautifully strange. Stay Out Here is a lengthy and comfortably-uncomforting highlight, tweaking its way across ten minutes plus it is all anxiety and paranoia staking claim to some of the most tense moments on offer and some brilliant vocals including guest Shannon Funchess and also featuring in collaboration Emily Roydson. http://youtu.be/DoH6k6eIUS4 Its not all epic sprawls through ambience though, like the twenty minute centrepiece Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized or the ten plus minute madness that is Fracking Fluid Injection, and the shorter tracks bring some further, perhaps more easily digestible, highlights. Without You My Life Would Be Boring is one of the most straightforward tracks on the album but is far from straightforward as grooves on multilayered rhythms that call to mind Afro-beat and wind instruments of sorts that blurt out off-whistles as Karin sounds kind of like an even more alien Kate Bush. Immediately after it Wrap Your Arms Around Me is dense with broken fuzz, nightmarish drone frequencies, pounding drums and yet it is highlighted by such gentle vocals that it becomes heartfelt. Somehow. Ready To Lose closes the album and though it starts with the tension youve come accustomed to throughout the album it actual reveals itself to be the light at the end of the tunnel; a light relief almost. If youve come to this album for singles and synthpop, albeit experimental, then youre going to be disappointed. If youve come for a challenge, or to see just how far down the rabbit hole The Knife can go after Silent Shout, then youve come to one of the albums of the year for you. Its not an easy listen, and certainly not a casual listen, many might not finding themselves repeat listening to it much, if at all, but for an immersive listen that is cerebral yet somehow emotive and has as little going on as it does a lot going on then you have to appreciate the scope of this album. Though, its more of a soundtrack for a sci-fi film adaptation of a dystopian novel that no ones written yet.