The Knife - Like a Pen Album: Silent Shout [2006]
a brother and sister duo hailing from stockholm, sweden, the knife takes inspiration from vintage synth pop and forward-thinking electronic music, crafting a sound that is equally unsettling, playful, and beautiful. olof and karin dreijer formed the knife in 1999 and worked on their music in their home studios, releasing several "preliminary" works before their actual debut, 2005's "deep cuts". their initial success was fueled by josé gonzález's cover of the single "heartbeats" when it appeared in a commercial for sony's bravia and became a hit, earning more acclaim for the dreijers outside of sweden. their second album, "silent shout", is much darker, more ambitious, and finds the dreijers stretching their sonics and downplaying the overt poppiness of "deep cuts". but, while the album isn't as whimsical or immediate as has been in the past, it's just as inventive, if not more so. karin's vocals are more striking than ever; treated as another instrument in the arrangements, they're layered, pitch-shifted, and tweaked until there's almost nothing left but tones and emotions. on the epic "like a pen," she describes a character's struggle with body issues with disturbing clarity: "sharpen my body like a pen...something too small for a lens." many of the album's songs have a hushed, eerie intensity, but "silent shout" also sets off flares of emotion against its frosty backdrops.
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