join me in anticipating musics by FEVER RAY (aka one half of the knife)

(I was talking about their lack of patience, xpost. They don't have to like it. :-) )

Well for me this is some sort of a light version of 'silent shout. They both came out around the same time of year and I remember being very interested and addicted with both at first before it started erosioning. Tho, Silent Shout started wearing off until April and 'Fever Ray' has worn off in less than a month for me.

obviously the brother is not a necessary element of the knife. did karin dreijer do the music?

what i mean to say is that this may as well be a knife album. karin is the one who sends chills down my spine.

Totally disagree - there's really obviously something missing here. That's not to say it's a bad record but it's got the same problem as The Eraser, when you take the seemingly most prominent member away from the joint creative spark that's responsible for their best work.

This is a much better record than The Eraser though, but it's very samey. That said, Keep The Streets Empty For Me is amazing, and I think I'd rather listen to that 12 times in a row than play the album again.

^ this, including streets empty love (though not limited to that track). most obvious absence is that of person who writes the catchy bits.

how do you know he writes the "catchy" bits and not karin, and maybe instead of his absence resulting in it being less "catchy" this is just an artistic choice by karin?

Silent Shout had catchy bits?

yes

silent shout was wall to wall catchy bits! pop tunes. ear candy with hooks. this is ear candy with, well, with fewer hooks, let's say. or less obvious hooks. and i don't know that this isn't an artistic choice on karin's part (last post was meant to come across a bit tongue-in-cheek). but if so, it's a perverse one

a certain sparkle seems to have gone into recession. i miss the seemingly effortless knack for jaw-droppingly perfect (pop) moments on display in deep hits and silent shout, and you know, it's tempting to speculate. "when i grow up", for instance, plays like "from off to on" with the genius excised

again though, "if i had a heart", "dry & dusty" & "keep the streets empty" are magnificent

Forgot to mention this earlier, but the video for "If I Had a Heart" is free on US iTunes until next Tuesday morning.

Love this album, especially in concentrated doses. Putting on "I'm Not Done" after sitting in relative silence for hours was an outstanding experience.

No mention of the "When I Grow Up" video? For shame! It's the same guy that did the Royksopp video with Karin and it's a beaut.

we share our mother's health is catchy in the most fucked sort of way, but i generally disagree with the above comment that silent shout had "catchy bits"

it's a mood album, it's not catchy

some conflation of catchy with dancey perhaps. that's the only thing "missing" from this virtual Knife LP.

i don't quite get why there are two singles with videos from this album already - neither really scream single to me (but then nothing from the album really does).

I posted it a couple of weeks back. yah, it is way awesome xxp.

'like a pen' is catchy and there are other bits on the album that are as well, but i think on a whole yeah 'silent shout' might be more about the mood than catchiness. which is fine, mood is underrated as a quality.

if someone asked you to describe the knife, would you say catchy and dancey? really?

@blueski

knife are totally an atmosphere band, but this seems to take that a little further

cutty not necessarily but as The Knife they do tend to deal in dancier, poppier terms and memorable patterns and hooks e.g. Pass This On steel drums, Like A Pen chorus

i can get behind those adjectives if you're talking about deep cuts. not silent shout, which is a difficult deep dark mood-hole of a record.

well you can still dance to half of it

yah it's def not as poppy as deep cuts but still

it fucks you right in your mood-hole

it's a headphone record. sure you can dance to it if you want. but i'd make fun of you.

wtf is this argument even about anymore? i love everything they do but i'll tend to prefer the stuff with overt/bigger beats

it's not an argument. it's a discussion. my main point is that so many people are critiquing fever ray as tuneless/hookless, like silent shout was a big dance party.

i suppose the difference between fever ray and SS is not necessarily the absence of beats and melodies, which were thin on the ground on silent shout, but the arpeggiator. e.g. I feel like forest families totally belongs on this album thematically but not sonically. also, this may be bullshit, but i guess the average BPM is higher on SS. i love both albums with the fire of one thousand suns, but there's definitely a qualitative difference between them. if people don't like both then their opinions are incorrect and what's next voting for nazis?, but i agree with them that SS and this have differences that are not negligible.

i think the bpm thing might be key - SS might not have been "catchy" or "dance party" per se (though at least three of its cuts were pretty ubiquitous in dance sets that year) but the tempo of the catchier tracks gave it an energy, a propulsion, which FR lacks. it's a qn of what FR brings to the table instead, and i'm still in the process of figuring that out.

i agree, plus, those slower tempos don't really waver much on FR

not many metal percussive sounds on FR gives it way less propulsion

it's like, i really love 'from off to on' and 'forest families' in the context of SS, where the catchier tracks provide a great counterpoint to them, but i'm not sure i'd really want a whole album of them, which is what FR feels like so far to me. i don't dislike any of it per se, it's a v impressive work...i'm just not into it.

don't forget na na na

Finally heard this, and it's excellent!

when i grow up on of the rare promo videos that actually makes me like a track more.

lovin that dude from studio's remix of when i grow up :)

oh man, i didn't get into that remix at all. it was like a studio remix distilled down only to the most typical elements with the vocals just kinda plopped on top throughout most of it. i really hate to dislike it, but yeah...

^kind of agree with this

but still happy to hear studio and so I dig it

I never thought I'd say this about a Knife-related release, but this sounds so much better in the sunshine.

I don't think I quite appreciated the first time round how some of the tracks seem to waver between warmth and ice - a bit of a push and pull between sunny Balearic sounds and dark Teutonic synthpop.

When I Grow Up and Coconut in particular have this real 'industrial goth takes time out to go and sit on a beach' feel to them.

I really love the artwork, Max, and I TRULY don't mean to be a dick here; I'm just curious - did they never mention Charles Burns when discussing the artwork? (Seeing as how the "Silent Shout" video was a total "Black Hole" homage, so I figure the Knife are into him)?

Either way, it's really great - and the cover is the reason I'm buying the physical copy instead of picking it up on iTunes!

Yeah, looking forward to a physical release. Somehow I've imagined it being white-on-black silkscreen in a matte black cardboard sleeve, but it probably won't be. . .

You asked for a non-shiny cardboard sleeve? Well, look what I got in the mail from bengans.se today:

http://i41.tinypic.com/tzhqg.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/10o0868.jpg

Enhanced CD:

I:\>dir
Volume in drive I is Fever Ray
Volume Serial Number is 51F4-3665

Directory of I:\

05/01/2009 14:51 103.849.072 If I Had A Heart, High.mp4
05/01/2009 15:15 38.851.518 If I Had A Heart, Low.mp4
2 File(s) 142.700.590 bytes

i wonder why the sunglasses

I got somethin' to say to you and you better listen -
i'm gonna tell ya how to be cool in one easy lesson:

sunglasses after dark

That looks great StanM!

What's with the 'high' and 'low'? Is it the video?

Yes, it's the video in two formats.

I love this album! can't wait for the physical release. this doesn't have the highs of Silent Shout, but it
seems more consistent. dark and moody without being depressing, beautiful melodies, great sound palette...
even the crappy mp3s have amazing depth.

Google translation of an interview in a Belgian paper today. Kiss, Tomahawk, The Knife. :-)

"Oer" cannot be translated, it seems ;)
She also mentioned Kiss in an interview with Groove. (mentioning that a friend of her daughter said "Geil! Your mother looks like she's in Kiss")