The Kniφe* ‎– Shaking The Habitual

As interesting as this album is, it's a bit of a trainwreck. A bloated monstrous 2-disc assault that takes the weirdness from Silent Shout but removes all pop sensibilities and catchy melodies. You're left with a lot of pure atmosphere and insanity but it all feels extremely hollow for me and more like they are trying to make an artistic statement.

And it feels really hypocritical to release an album with a "fuck rich people" vibe when you're as rich as The Knife have gotten from how much they earned on their earlier stuff. Sorry but maybe if this was their first album I could defend the political feminist punk attitude but from someone like The Knife it just doesn't work.

It's fine having an album with a few lengthy songs but when almost none of the songs here are less than 6 minutes and some of them reach 10-20 minutes in length, you're kind of left with something that is frankly unlistenable on its own unless you just like this sort of stuff.

Personally I much prefer The Knife's earlier stuff and this just feels like they're ending on a very embarassing note for me...

This is one of my favourite albums of recent times, quite possibly of all time, but I can't say I was super impressed with the mastering on this vinyl edition. Despite the detail and busy-ness of the music, everything feels quite narrow and hemmed in to me, where I would have expected a much greater sense of space and wider dynamics. Just doesn't sound like a very good mastering job for the vinyl format (compare it to another 'experimental' electronic album on vinyl like Rival Consoles' Howl and the difference in quality is stark). Was wondering if anyone else has similar feelings? It's not a terrible sounding record by any means, and the packaging is outstanding, but I'm also painfully aware of how much better it *could* sound.

The Knife now finally reached their "double-edge" - at best, this is a seriously overrated album which has its moments but the "universal acclaim" by the public deserves a large question mark.

While their previous proper studio album (being "Silent Shout") remains a masterpiece in both, idea and concept, "Shaking the Habitual" fails by large at being so predictably unpredictable - I guess, the title "Playing It Safe" would fit it much better. Even more frustrating is the question - what makes this album so special that many before them haven't tried already, and with far more intriguing results?! The Knife seemed to have been unique at one point - and that's what made them the ultimate 21st century band at the time of "Silent Shout", no-one sounded like them and to be honest, at the time I doubt many heard of them before that album (I know I haven't); The Knife were a rather obscure pop-entity already with two albums and a film soundtrack under their wing, prior to "Silent Shout". And then, a deserved hype happened putting The Knife on top of the world map of pop's perverse darlings. Exploiting their sound and image in most enigmatic fashion, "Silent Shout" set pretty high standards - in trying to push this uniqueness further to the limit, most things fell flat on the blade causing painful cuts ever after. This already happened with Fever Ray, which happens to sound like a "summer" version of "Silent Shout", rather than a solo offering by Karin Dreijer - witnessed in her established childishly dark vocal mannerisms filtered through morbid, electronic distortion.

Then happened "Tomorrow, In a Year" - a joint effort with Mt. Simms and PlanningToRock along with various opera singers. Maybe this is where The Knife got most inspiration to do something remotely unusual, being "Shaking The Habitual". Of course, needles to say that this joint release had far more consistency, mainly due to the fact The Knife's obvious edges were obscured by the presence of various other vocalists other than Dreijer alone, that make "Tomorrow, In a Year" a far more genuine listening (additionally pleasant in sounding dangerously close to Meredith Monk's work).

I remember the pompous announcement of "Shaking the Habitual", with the song "Full Of Fire". The song clocked in well over 9 minutes has so much emptiness that it felt instantly disappointing by the duo's sudden lack of ideas - the music is a mess of forced distortion and bored vocals, which makes the perfect equivalent of a spoiled brat desperate for some attention. This can be said for most of the material on this album. Some tiny moments are worth the check but in all, while the habitual may be "shaken" it still sounds more like stirred without proper direction - despite the very duo or their admirers' insisting otherwise.

The overall effect is a mixed bag of what it should have been (a decent album) but chose to become this unbearable, tedious experimental doodling beast instead.

2/5