THE KNIFE

SHAKING THE HABITUAL (Brille)

16/20

Despite the corrosive calypso of songs like Heartbeats and the seriously-goofy, goofily-serious vocal intonations on tracks such as We Share Our Mother’s Health, the veneer of good times that glossed over previous Knife records was always just that; a thin layer of surface-level fun that masked the output of a group who made serious music, music that demanded deep and nuanced listening. On Shaking the Habitual – an album that largely follows on from where the semi-operatic Tomorrow, In a Year collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock left off – Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer have produced a suite of songs that defy immediate categorisation; it eschews the perky electropop of Deep Cuts and the minimal clatter of Silent Shout preferring nods to the primal ooze of US noise, glances in the direction of free-improv jazz, approximations of stereo-scraping field recordings and gauzy ambient shiver.

It’s certainly an ambitious record, imbued as it is with a sense of the uncanny. Andersson’s vocals root the listener in an immediately recognisably Knife-y context even when she’s sparring with Africanesque polyrhythmic clanking (A Tooth for an Eye), battling with propulsive rolling drums, and reverberating clicks that melt into full-bodied rotting post-rave arpeggios which in turn bleed into vocodered, decaying birdsong (Full of Fire) or circumnavigating the kind of sonically-swollen frozen ambient-tundra that Tim Hecker’s stalked out as his own over recent years (Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized). And it occasionally overreaches itself, the odd song extends itself beyond its own tangible scope, with the listener left pleading for more judicious editing. But for sheer ambition it’ll be hard to find an album to top it this year. Just don’t expect an easy ride.

– – – – – – – – – –

Words: Josh Baines