... and that band is called The Knife.
As chronicled right here on this very blog, I never paid any attention to The Knife until people started going nuts over Fever Ray. In particular, the song "If I Had A Heart" wormed its way under my skin, its analog synth warbles smoothing out the razor edges of the vocal processing and undulating serenely over the pulsating bass drum. I know a lot of people find terror and sinister overtones in the song, largely I think because of the creepy shamanistic imagery incorporated into the video, but that is not what the song says to me. Instead, I get wistfulness, longing, and an overarching sense of remote warmth and immediate pain, almost like an overweight, awkward aunt who loves you very much and shows you by smothering your face in her bosom as she gives you painful, crushing hugs. The rest of the album, particularly on standout tracks "Dry and Dusty" and "Concrete Walls", follows a similar emotional template.
The almost Pavlovian "WANT" reaction Fever Ray gave me made me reassess the one Knife song I'd heard, which was "We Share Our Mother's Health". At the time, and again I believe my disconnect was caused by the accompanying video, I thought it was interesting-sounding but not particularly compelling. Listening to it again via Last FM after becoming a Fever Ray head transformed it into a delirious swirl of awesome; the pounding beats gave me the aggression I was missing from the Fever Ray material (even if I didn't know it at the time) and the overlapping vocals hit every music nerd "oh hey, the person who wrote this is totally into fugues and canons" button in my body. It was a quick decision to grab Silent Shout; my only regret is that I wasn't all over this album when it came out. Not only does it have "We Share Our Mother's Health" on it, but it also contains the claustrophobic title track, all-out boogie stomper "Like A Pen", the ethereal, dreamlike "The Captain", and possibly the greatest melody Karin has ever sung in the form of "Marble House", a sweeping, majestic march of sensuality that floors me every time I hear it. I have played this album upwards of 50 times this year and I have yet to get sick of it; it's one of my favorite albums of all time and I really thought it would encapsulate everything about The Knife that appeals to me.
This perception lasted up until I heard about "Tomorrow, in a year". This production, co-sponsored with Hotel Pro Forma, is billed as an electro-opera about Charles Darwin. As a semi-pro opera chorister obsessed with electronic music who seriously considered doing a double-major in computer science and music so that he could write software that would generate art songs in the form of club music, everything about this project is designed to make me go "SQUEEE!" and the Youtube clips I've tracked down have turned the soundtrack to this project into my most anticipated release of 2010. If I thought the budget for it could be raised, I'd suggest an Opera Boston/BMOP collaboration to bring it to the Boston area, but unfortunately I think the orchestration might be a dealbreaker. Still, I expect it to be incredible and, if it comes anywhere within 200 miles of me, I plan to go see it.
All of this is really lead-up to what I actually want to write about, though: Deep Cuts. I just got this album last week, mostly because a lot of the people I talk music with could not stop raving about the song "Heartbeats". Granted, this is the song that really made people start paying attention to The Knife in the first place but for some reason I wasn't paying attention when it exploded and, being familiar with The Knife's later work, it didn't strike me nearly as revelatory or amazing as its ardent supports proclaim it to be. The thing about it, though, is that it displays on its sleeve the romantic warmth that is the common thread through all of the Knife-related material. There is no obfuscation via costumes or vocal processing here; this song is a full-on nostalgia blast wrapped up in gorgeous synth patches and an easy rocking beat that can't help but make you smile. It is a full-on blast of joy to listen to; in today's market of regurgitated formula in practically every genre imaginable, it's startling to encounter something so naively fresh and charming. This sense of heart-on-sleeve abandonment permeates most of the songs on this album; no matter the mood, every song sounds like it not only BELIEVES whatever emotion it is selling, but also that no one else has ever felt that emotion as deeply or fully before. From the sinister assault of "Girls' Night Out" to the brightly manic "Listen Now" to the almost-literally breathless "You Take My Breath Away", the songs display artifice crafted so cunningly that you can't help but believe it. This makes the weird songs even weirder; aggro-freakout "The Cop" and the drug-addled sleaze of "Hangin' Out" seem like they have no place in the earnest company created by much of the rest of the album and the sparse chirpiness of "You Make Me Like Charity" initially comes across as a complete joke, but eventually even these worm their way under your skin and make you believe in them.
For those who can't be bothered with all of this and skipped to the bottom to see if I had a point, I do: The Knife cannot be fucked with. BOW DOWN.
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