The Knife - Shaking the Habitual

Hello everyone! I am sorry that it has been a while, but I hung myself up on this review because I found this album very hard to approach.  This shouldn't be a surprise for anyone familiar with the Knife's work in general, or with this album in particular.  They have always had a shadowy and evil character to their electro pop, but as they produce more albums they seem to fade even further into the abyss.

The last studio album from the Knife was 2006's Silent Shout.  Since then, the group has produced Karin Dreijer Andersson's sullen and haunting solo project Fever Ray, and an obtuse Avant-garde opera about the life of Charles Darwin, titled Tomorrow in a Year.  I wouldn't recommend the latter of these two, unless you feel like being confused and horrified for 90 minutes straight.  However, it does help to be aware of it, in order to understand the more acoustic and experimental direction they followed from that point to their new album Shaking the Habitual.  They experiment with the same instruments on both albums, but this time they have actually mastered them, rather than just experimenting wildly.

The Knife could find a way to play a mean mayonnaise. 

This new work is still heavily experimental, but the structure is much more fluid, and feels more organic than Tomorrow in a Year.  However, Just because it flows well, don't think it's going to be a relaxing listen.  When the Knife says they are Shaking the Habitual, they clearly mean it.

Because of its name, I was expecting something more pointed and political.  Instead I received an amorphous, impenetrable blob of primordial ooze.  This fact alone would annoy me more if the cathartic experimentation wasn't the message in and of itself.  I think this decision goes hand in hand with the acoustic direction.  It almost feels like a regression through time, back to humanity's infancy.  There is less structure, and less electronics, and instead more unpredictability, and more emotional indulgence.

You want a nine minute, ambient, brainmelter with synths deep enough to hide the lochness monster in? and with only four lyrics about eating coffee and cake for lunch? Bam! "Cherry on Top," how about 20 minutes of tense, dissonant groaning created by recording noise in a boiler room with sputtering percussion that builds to nowhere? No? TOO BAD! "Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized!"

Shaking the Habitual is profound in its commitment to unbridled emotional expression.  The Knife doesn't shy away from a feeling or a thought until it has fully run its course, whether it takes 20 minutes or 37 seconds. Despite the huge variation in song lengths and styles, It is consistently dark, bold, and unapologetically ferocious.  These songs are so seriously far off the deep end; they could have been written by Cthulhu himself.  They do have their more accessible moments though.

Because Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn would be such a good chorus...

Like the single, "A Tooth for an Eye."  It has all the characteristics of a great Knife song: a steady build, intricate percussion, and disturbing vocal manipulations underwritten by a challenge of gender roles (which they expressed nicely in the music video).  This song and the other pagan dance ritual, "Without You My Life Would be Boring," are definitely the high points on the album for me.  They have a determined, satanic energy that makes me want to run until my lungs cave in, or scream till I start coughing up blood.

The second track "Full of Fire," is also a pounding, percussive, tour de force with some really devastating drum rolls, but I seriously hate the vocal delivery.  Despite its different manipulations, it remains displeasing to me in a way that isn't bold enough to make me more than mildly uncomfortable.  In fact, if I had to pick one thing I really didn't like about Shaking the Habitual, it would be the singing in general.  Usually, the Knife's strange vocals are blended seamlessly with their malevolent synthesizers, but their move to this more acoustic sound leaves the vocals sounding out of place in the beginnings of "Raging Lung," "Full of Fire," and "Ready to Lose."  They are eventually blended together, but the moments where they appear on their own are glaringly lacklustre.

At the end of this thing, and after reading the insane manifesto the Knife produced to describe it; I feel this album defies being rated on a traditional scale.  If someone were to give it a bad rating rating for being an inaccessible, shadowy behemoth without structure, catchy lyrics, or any semblance of comfort anywhere in it, then they would merely be confirming its existence as something disturbingly outside the ordinary.  It is long and disquieting and it may burn you out before it finishes, but this nightmare deserves your time and effort.  It will remind you that the strange, the beautiful, and the horrifying are not always separate when we encounter them within ourselves or hidden within the depths of the world.  By presenting them wholesale, and not parsing them down or separating them the Knife has created something truly disturbing and intensely thought provoking.  My god that was long.

Discussion!

• Honestly, the one thing I am curious about with this album is how other people experienced it.  Could you listen to the whole thing? Did it make you uncomfortable? Did it inspire you to think or did it just confuse you?

I really want to engage with people about this album, rather than just adding my review to the pile of positive reviews that already exist for it.  Please let me know in the comments.

Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol Two Judges

On a recent trip to the mall, I noticed New History Warfare Vol. Two: Judges by Colin Stetson filed under the rock / pop section of HMV.  After my initial surprise at finding this obscure album at HMV, I realized that whoever put this here had never listened to it, or even been in a room with someone who had.  This beast of an experimental jazz record resembles nothing close to pop or rock music, even though the soloist in question has played saxophone with the likes of Arcade Fire and Bon Iver as recently as last year.

New History Warfare Vol. Two: Judges is the second album by soloist Colin Stetson.  While listening to this behemoth, you may find it hard to believe that only one man is responsible for the cacophony of sax that you will hear even though each song was recorded in one take with no looping.  Mr. Stetson utilizes a technique called circular breathing, which allows him to play pieces up to five minutes long without stopping the insanity for even a moment.  The effect is quite dizzying, and at times it sounds barely human at all.  The saxophone seems to leap and bounce off a cavernous expanse deep within the earth.   Also, look at how big it is, Link.  This man is a beast.

He also manipulates the sound of the saxophone using 24 microphone positions throughout his recording space, sometimes even placing them inside the saxophone itself.  This recording techniques allows the saxophone to express an array of strange noises and even makes it sound like a heard of charging horses on the song "Clothed in the Skin of the Dead."

There are times in this album when short, well needed, interludes break up the noise, and guest spots by Laurie Anderson and Shara Worden help to add a human element to the devilish menagerie of sounds without distracting too much from Colin's playing.  "Lord I Just Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes" utilizes Shara Worden's voice to devastating effect.  She sings mournfully about her family and dismal life in a traditional blues fashion, while Colin's saxophone sniffles along in the background as if it is literally trying to keep from crying.  He plays one note throughout the entire song, which at times groans with such intensity that it feels like you are listening to the world rip apart around you.

I also felt incredibly impressed that one of the most emotional moments on the album for me was the 36 second track "All the Colours Bleached to White."  This track contains no brass at all, but instead opts to use a glorious choir to describe what feels like a heart breaking surrender.

The sounds that he produces from his demonic saxophone are so rich and deep they yawn and groan like some great beast from the bowels of hell in "Judges" and "Red Horses (II)."  He can also sound shrill and frantic in "From no Part of Me Could I Summon a Voice," strangely beautiful in "A Dream of Water" or shudder with ecstasy in "The Righteous Wrath of an Honourable Man."

This album blew me away so completely, that I could do nothing but sit in silence after some of the songs.  I find it as invigorating and challenging as it is entertaining.  It can be shrill and evil sounding, but it consistently shines with a strange sort of beauty I find it hard to put my finger on.  This is an experience like nothing you have ever heard before,  and it is definitely worth your time to listen to the whole thing.  This album actually came out in 2011, but I have been holding onto this review and refining my ideas about it since then.  I feel like I could still talk about it more, but I will leave it to you to experience yourself.