THE KNIFE HANNA MED H ALBUM RABID RELEASE: NOVEMBER 26, 2003 REVIEW: JANUARY 10, 2004

Swedish sibling duo have a lot of things speaking for them. Their idiosyncratic take on electronic pop does its best to shatter gender roles and is characterised by a very personal use of cheap synth sounds, combined with the, eh, rather odd vocals of both Karin and Olof Dreijer. Still, I can’t really find it in myself to fully appreciate them, for no other reason than the fact that the end result simply doesn’t speak to me. Other than on a theoretical level.
“Hanna med H” is their second album 2003, and follows up the much acclaimed “Deep Cuts”. The soundtrack to the film with the same name is a bit of a departure from their earlier work. But only partly. The music is still mainly based on sounds that, at least to my ears, sound like they’re squeezed out of those old digital synthesizers most people would rather try to forget. But The Knife relish them, and manage to bring them out of the eighties and into the noughties. Being a soundtrack album, “Hanna med H” is largely instrumental, and not all of it works without accompanying images.
Some pieces are pleasantly atmospheric, whereas others sound like digital muzak from the lobbies of hell. There’s also some pointless Teutonic techno body (“Wanting to Kill”) and, worst of all, “Poetry by Night”, what sounds like a stillborn attempt at an Enya song – teethgrindingly bad.
But everything’s forgiven when I play “Handy-Man” for the third time in a row. A simple body tune that’s probably the best song The Knife have ever done. In any case it outshines everything on “Hanna med H”.

KRISTOFFER NOHEDEN