Shaking The Habitual takes the duo’s music to a starker and more brutal place still. The first thing you notice about the opening two tracks is the emphasis on percussion – the rhythm tracks dominate in A Tooth For An Eye and Full Of Fire, the latter grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and hauling you through a haunted forest of creepy disembodied moans and squeals. Terrifying and bracing as those songs are, A Cherry On Top is the first track that truly hints at the weirdness to come. Five of the song’s eight minutes are devoted to wheezing ambience, before Karin’s twisted, spectral vocal drops in, amid clattering and clanging industrial noises. The Knife’s lyrics have long delved into the creepier side of domesticity and conformity – think Forest Families, from Silent Shout – but now, the songs sound like actual nightmares.
When this new, more percussive approach works, it really works – Without You My Life Would Be Boring is one of the most thrilling and weird tracks The Knife have ever recorded, pairing galloping tribal percussion with flute accompaniment and the kind of manic, guttural vocal performance that only Dreijer can give. Wrap Your Arms Around Me seems specifically designed to induce feelings of seasickness, while Networking approaches the starkness and minimalism of vintage German techno. The most divisive track is surely Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized – it’s 19-minutes of near-silent ambient sound shoved directly into the middle of the album, daring you to skip it or switch it off. It’s a weird prank to pull, but it’s quintessential Knife. Karin and Olof don’t care for boring, bourgeois constructs like lyrics and melodies – they’ll do whatever they damn well please.
Shaking The Habitual is a tremendous achievement for The Knife, and is clearly the next logical step in their weird and uncompromising musical trajectory. Am I in a hurry to listen to it again? I dunno, pass me the Fever Ray album and I’ll think about it.
BY ALASDAIR DUNCAN
Best Track: Without You My Life Would Be Boring
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: Tomorrow In A Year THE KNIFE
In A Word: Bracing
