Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#13 Rilo Kiley, TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS

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vs.

#77 The Knife, THE KNIFE

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To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for THE KNIFE, and it’s from @2006dvdrip.bsky.social. Take it away, New-Wave Carrie White!

I first discovered The Knife's music in freshman year of high school. I would have already been listening to Nine Inch Nails at this point, and familiar with Radiohead's catalog for a couple of years when I decided to look "synth-pop" up on the internet. My search query brought me to three bands that I recall--Kraftwerk, VNV Nation and The Knife. If this wasn't in the era of Limewire then it was in the time of Kazaa or some other p2p file sharing platform where I would have to set out in search of each song on a track by track basis, repeatedly typing in keywords and being lucky to secure a full album without any warped MP3's. 

VNV Nation's 'future pop' was intriguing to me, restrained and self-serious, and tracks like 'Darkangel' and their cover of 'Paint it Black' got some plays on my iPod classic. I downloaded Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine and listened to it in its entirety. I think I was a bit confused by the minimal, mechanic precision of it as opposed to whatever it was I was expecting it to be, but I enjoyed the song 'Neon Lights.’

It would be their album Trans-Europe Express that drew me fully into their sound, and discovering the music of their contemporaries Can and Neu! would pull me into a world all its own among Faust, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh and Amon Düül. 

But that was later and as a fourteen year old I was concerned with things like "indie rock" and "synth-pop" so I downloaded what I could from The Knife. I most particularly remember having ‘Heartbeats' but there are a couple of others from Deep Cuts (2003) that have a ring of familiarity when I listen back to them now, like ‘Pass This On’ and ‘Listen Now.’ I also had ‘Marble House’ from their third album Silent Shout (2006.) 

I would have been understanding all of this in the context of a constant need to discover, at that age, music that pushes the boundaries of rock instrumentation through found sound, synthesizers, electronic percussion, and experimental vocals. The Knife were, like Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Clinic or Swans, one of many bands I had a few songs but not any full albums by on my iPod and would regularly come back to. A lot of these bands I still revisit, like The Shins or Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and occasionally even The Submarines; there are others, like I'm From Barcelona, that I pretty much never do. 

The Knife is the duo of siblings Karin and Olof Dreijer from Gothenburg, Sweden. Citing techno, grime, Le Tigre and Siouxsie and the Banshees among their musical influences while also naming David Lynch, the video game Doom, and comedy series Trailer Park Boys as aesthetic points of reference, they made a name for themselves early on without touring and only making rare public appearances donning bird's masks. They first acheived international recognition from ‘Heartbeats,’ a single from their second album which was covered by José González and also used in an advertisement for Sony. 

The same year, The Knife earned the Swedish Grammis award for Pop Group of the Year, but refused to appear, in protest of male dominace of the music industry. After using the money from the Sony ad campaign to establish their own label, they performed their first show in 2005 and set out on their first tour in the following year to support their third album, Silent Shout.

Musically, the sound of The Knife has usually remained pretty stripped down and raw on the first three albums they’ve come to be known for. A big, bubbly analog synth that pulses, modulates and arpeggiates forms the melodic backdrop. The drums are electronic, stark and minimal, sometimes incorporating world-music textures, as on the tribal percussion pads of ‘Pass This On’ or ‘Take My Breath Away.’ 

According to the liner notes of their debut, both members contributed “accordion, alto saxophone, electric, acoustic, and bass guitars, organs, synthesizers, drum machines, and we did some sampling and drum programming.”

Karin’s vocals make creative , fun and sometimes deceptive use of multiple filters and pitch-shifting effects that give their multi-layered vocal performances the impression of being the work of multiple singers with different ranges, as on the chilling ‘Marble House’ from Silent Shout, which had led me to believe for half my life that more than one person was a vocalist in this band.

(‘Pass This On,’ a tale of longing and seduction that has become a sort of “comfort” song for me, enlists a pitched up vocal for its disco bridge : “I wasn’t really looking for more than / some company on than the dancefloor,” Karin responds at regular pitch, over a constant, mean bass synth riff. During a low point with nothing but music to even me out between periods of manic intensity, I started to find that only this song and the heavy, pulsating bass synth of ‘Girls’ Night Out,’ the track right before it on Deep Cuts, could block out the noise of the world in and around me. I’d skip through the album and find it a bit light on material that piqued my interest in the same way, but I was certainly coming to an understanding of The Knife.

It didn’t take me long to realize there were a number of high intensity songs to be found on Deep Cuts, like the cathy and spirited “Is It Medicine?”) all of this is about Deep Cuts or The Knife in general 

“I Take Time,” is a moody, industrial-inflected Big Beat banger that is heavy on atmosphere and has the urgent, agressive qualities of Björk’s “Army of Me,” or The Prodigy’s work from this time. “Reindeer” has a horniness to it that exemplifies the mysterious sense of fun and playfulness that makes The Knife stand out from many of their peers.

In summary, I think The Knife’s debut is an important and diverse early electro-clash album that’s often overshadowed by their later releases.

Thank you, New-Wave Carrie White!

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Thanks,

Kent