The Knife – Shaking the Habitual

Album Review by Lauren Strain | 28 Mar 2013
Album title: Shaking the Habitual
Artist: The Knife
Label: Rabid
Release date: 8 April

Accompanied by a manifesto expressing distaste for the 'already imagined', siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer's first record as The Knife in seven years is a disquieting and structureless piece of work that speaks of an endemic dissatisfaction with most of the systems in which we both live and make art, its own insistent shapelessness being itself an attempt to – well – shake the habitual.

Without You My Life Would Be Boring mixes scatological lyrics with junglist drums; Fracking Fluid Injection is a cacophony of rubbed blades, hooting vox and shrill warnings, while two sinus-searing interruptions, Oryx and Crake, namecheck the titular characters of Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic novel. A Tooth for an Eye and Stay Out Here are the only tracks you could really refer to as songs, and to put that in perspective, the latter is an 11-minute slice of nasty rave. This will be harrowing live. [Lauren Strain]

http://www.theknife.net