The Knife - Silent Shout

Anyone looking for the warm, accessible techno of the Knife's "Heartbeats" (popularized by a Jose Gonzalez cover) won't find it on Silent Shout. On this album, Swedish siblings Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson push their brand of vocal electronica to its creepiest limits, and achieve a result that is by turns lovely and truly disturbing, but always engaging. The beats and chords are clean and inventive, from choppy, pogo-stick rhythms to smooth progressions and skittering clicks. The vocals are consistently bent, distorted, stretched, and otherwise manipulated. This can be funny or unnerving, depending on the song. In both cases, though, it adds to the emotional heft of an album that is wonderfully catchy and startlingly intelligent.
(RS)