One of my favourite bands is called The Knife, Consisting of Karin Dreijer Andersson and her brother Olof Andersson. They are an electronic-pop duo from Gothenberg, Sweden but the themes that they write about are varied and interesting.
Recently they put out this video of them performing in New York during one of the final legs of their Shaking the Habitual tour. I remember back in 2004 I was really close to being able to see them in Toronto, but my schdedule didn't work out and I had to pass it up.
I really love this entire film. The energy of all the performers is contagious. I think that I am also becoming more able to appreciate this sort of thing, the work that goes into putting on something like this. The Knife wanted to do something different with their Shaking the Habitual album and tour, and this performance is the final culmination of all their work over their entire musical career.
The album Shaking the Habitual had very mixed reviews, a lot of the negativity stemmed from the fact that several tracks on the album were simply ambient-y type, sometimes very garish bits of 'music' but the good songs that were on there are actually really, really good. And not something that you tend to normally hear on the radio, not to mention their whole notion of Shaking the Habitual as expressed by their lyrics and themes. After The Knife completed this tour, they announced that they would be moving on to other projects of their own and disbanded.
Tracks:
- 0:25 Wrap Your Arms Around Me
- 5:50 Raging Lung
- 16:00 We Share Our Mothers' Health
- 20:50 Bird
- 27:00 Without You My Life Would Be Boring
- 31:25 A Tooth For An Eye
- 38:15 One Hit
- 43:05 Full of Fire
- 52:20 Collective Body Possum
- 56:30 Ready To Lose
- 1:00:45 Pass This On
- 1:06:00 Stay Out Here
- 1:14:40 Silent Shout
