The Knife Reviewed
This, The Knife’s third album overall, is the first U.S. release for the duo and has taken American electro writers by complete surprise.
For their part, Swedish siblings Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson have crafted an album of icy synths, monotone vocals, and robotic beats parlaying paranoia (“The end is always near”), self-prostitution (“I’ve got a lot of money that burns in my hand”), and crippling amnesia (“Now I can’t think no more”). “The Captain” sets Cyndi Lauper-on-helium squealing to an echoed groove and a bassline that drops like stone through water. “Na Na Na” mawkishly pokes holes in a rich woman’s false sense of sexual security during two-and-a-half minutes of electronic bliss, but the stopper is “Like A Pen” and its raindrop percussion, which morphs into a playpen dance number while Andersson whines “Must be five hundred degrees!” She doesn’t say which: above or below zero.
— Steve Forstneger
