The Knife - The Knife

I'm listening to The Knife's eponymous album. I cannot stop. This album is brilliant to the extent that I forget that they ever made other albums. Whimsical? Yes, in some way. But sad as hell. Enigmatic lyrics. K. Dreijer is a fantastic writer, and one hell of a singer. "Kino" is upbeat, with a strange bounce, eerie singing. "Neon" has a fine saxophone part, and great lyrics, banal as they might appear. Music & lyrics fit perfectly. Generally, the album is characterized by a minimalist sound that still manages to contain tons of variations and small twists. "I just had to die" sounds like Islaja's electronic twin, surreal, scary. "I take time" is dominated by a heavy guitar (?) riff; it comes across as fierce and fragile at the same time - most of the songs combine these two modes. "Parade" epitomizes the slightly whimsical sound; a marching song, with lyrics as strange as anything! "N.Y Hotel" is nothing short of genius. "I'm darth vader / I know what I'm made of" - When K. Dreijer delivers these lines, she twitches them into something emotionally relevant, funny, depressing; a fucking entire register of feelings crop up within one single song. And nothing of it is whining self-indulgence. Because, you know, these guys sing about reindeers.