The Knife reissued
The Knife
The Knife/Deep Cuts
(Mute)
There are all sorts of delays on the road to notoriety in the music industry. Producers and songwriters rely on artists to make them famous first. Sometimes a stray track finds its way onto a soundtrack and blows up. But The Knife’s tale is new: they were beaten across the Atlantic by a fellow Swede with a cover of a song they already had a hit with in Europe.
Admittedly, I believed all this time “Heartbeats” was written and recorded by “new Nick Drake” José González. It appeared on Veneer, released 2003 in the Old Country before making its way to Champaign-based Hidden Agenda in 2005 and later the next year to Mute. I saw him perform it live twice in 2006 while covering other songs as well — I just didn’t know it was one too. The Knife, meanwhile, were bonafide pop stars back home and opened to rave reviews in the U.S. when their third album, Silent Shout, scored kudos from bloggers upon its Stateside release.
Around that time, I was sitting in a gay bar on Broadway before a Slayer show (long story) when “Heartbeats” came on the overhead in bouncy dance form with a female vocal. Being no stranger to the age of mash-ups and instant, Euro club tracks (longer story), I marveled at the extraction of a nylon-stringed, somber acoustic song for the potential soundtrack of a drug-fueled Ibiza romp. Then, weeks later like a punch in the face, I had Deep Cuts on my desk. There it was: track one, “Heartbeats,” originally released in 2003, and winner of the 2003 Swedish Hit Music Award for “Best Video.” I had unwittingly found the chicken, not the egg.
I then made another faulty assumption, using “Heartbeats” to believe The Knife were a slick synth act before they moved onto a winter wasteland on Silent Shout. Instead, it’s as if all three albums could have been released simultaneously. Karen Dreijer Andersson’s robotic delivery began as compellingly dispassionate on 2001’s self-titled debut as she does on the new album, going so far as to sing, “I’m Darth Vader/I know what I’m made of.” Despite the presence of the hit song, Deep Cuts introduces aspects of contorted vocals and steel drums (“Pass This On,” “You Take My Breath Away”) and international house (“Listen Now”). There’s even more to delve into with six bonus tracks and seven videos on a DVD, but right now I need to go further debunk the myth of José González.
Deep Cuts: 8
— Steve Forstneger
