The Knife - Shaking the Habitual

Warning: Long-ass blog post ahead. 

Spoilers: I love this album.

We begin in 2006, a very formative year for my musical tastes. Released that year were:

Grizzly Bear - Yellow House

Liars - Drum's Not Dead

The Knife - Silent Shout

I may talk more extensively on 2006 in another blog post, but for the purposes of this one I just want to establish how much I love The Knife. Silent Shout still sits in my top 5 albums of all time. I have been waiting for their follow up for 7 years.

I really don't know how to write about The Knife. The Knife are more than a band to me. They are an entity. Their existence as people almost feels like performance art. They are very secretive (obscuring or covering their faces in photographs) and very eccentric in their musical projects. I heard stories of Olof travelling to the tropical jungle to gain inspiration, and then he puts out music under the name Oni Ayhun that sounded like the sounds of an electronic jungle. They were commissioned to score an opera about Darwin. Karin accepted an award for her debut solo album as Fever Ray and this was the result:

I have been following The Knife's every move, watching in fascination, wondering what the hell their next album would sound like. Typically I build stuff like this up too high and I end up being underwhelmed. This is thankfully not the case with Shaking the Habitual.

This album is so different from anything else I've ever heard, but I can hear bits of Oni Ayhun in "Networking", influences from Tomorrow in a Year in "Stay Out Here", and it all still sounds like The Knife. I heard someone compare this album to Remain in Light by Talking Heads, and I really see some similarities in how important rhythm is on this record. Even on the slower tracks, it always feels like it's constantly moving and changing.

I do take issue with "Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized" and "Fracking Fluid Injection". I like these songs (Fracking more than Old Dreams), but I feel like they are really out of place. If someone had said to me "Kyle, The Knife are releasing an ambient album!" I would have been all:

But in the context of this album, it only slows the momentum down on a record that feels like it is all about constant motion.

I could go on about this album, I really love it. But since I don't like reading album reviews, and this is kind of turning into one, I'll just mention a few notes:

A Tooth For an Eye - I read on Pitchfork "You can almost see the vein bulging in Karin's neck as she sings 'Trust meeeeeee.'" ...Totes.
A Cherry On Top - The guitar or whatever the fuck string instrument that is... I love it.

Without You My Life Would Be Boring - When Karin screams at 3:05: 

Stay Out Here - I don't know what to do when I hear this song. Dance, shimmy, cringe, cry, convulse...
Ready to Lose - This song gets so intense without getting loud, which is really cool.

In summation: I will not be surprised if in 7 years I will look back upon this album as fondly as I do Silent Shout.

Hooray for exceeding expectations!