Tagline: ‘A thousand years seem to pass so quickly’
Early 2010 Swedish electro duo The Knife released 'Tomorrow, In A Year', an album based on the life and works of Charles Darwin. I can't begin to count the number of descriptions starting with ‘It’s okay, but … different to their previous work’. A respectful alternative for fans of the band to ‘it’s not really for me’. And in the newbie field reactions seemed to vary from an optimistic ‘interesting’ to a flat-out honest ‘awful!’ Suffice to say that 'Tomorrow, In A Year' was received with mixed feelings. Because even for fans of The Knife this can be pretty inaccessible, for some the threshold was even too high. It didn’t withhold Karin and Olof Dreijer from choosing an 11-minute song (surprisingly one of the most accessible songs on the record and generally well-received) for lead single and it didn’t stop me from giving it a try. Okay, I’ll admit that I would not be their biggest critic. The sheer idea that The Knife would make an opera screamed ‘album of the year’ in my mind months in advance, even before I had heard a single note. But what’s more important, the finished album managed to not only fill but exceed my biased, unfounded expectations.
Not that this is easy listening. Concept albums can take up a bit more of the listeners attention and that is especially the case for this 2-disc piece of work. ‘But ‘I don’t like it easy, I don’t like it the straight way’, Karin sings on 'Deep Cuts', and it’s pretty much with that state of mind that you should put this album on. Disc 1 – the most challenging one – starts off slow and silent, with nothing more than some bleeps capturing the idea of an empty world giving birth to the first live organisms. It’s only after a solid five minutes that the first voice shows up, that of mezzo-soprano Kristina Wahlin. 'Epochs' combines the beauty of Wahlin’s voice with heavy, amelodic drone. It’s characteristic for the first few songs on 'Tomorrow, in a Year': limited melodies, the overwhelming, dramatic voice of Wahlin battling with the chaotic, pounding drone and electronic noise. Quite the contrary of what music is supposed to contain, it does however fit within the concept that is being carried out here.
What is impressive though, is how The Knife manages to load some of the dark, amelodic songs on disc one with emotion. ‘Ebb tide Explorer’ creates a lonely, inhospitable water covered planet in which a single life form seems to seeks out for something. And ‘Variation of birds’ maybe best captures the concept of the album, albeit it at the same time one of the most difficult songs. The track starts off with pretty rudimentary electronic distortion but gradually evolves, becoming softer and more melodic with Wahlin’s voice taking it to a tragic culmination. Survival of the fittest put into music. Not for everyone – that much is clear – but for those who are still hanging in there disc two offers a different, more musical sound. The worst struggle seems to be over and the chaos settles down making place for melodies, some instruments and a dose of emotions. Opener ‘Annie Box’ for instance deals with the loss of Darwin’s daughter at an early age. With a limited set-up – little more than a simple string arrangement and four lines of text beautifully sung by Wahlin – it nontheless manages to move. Musical intermezzo ‘Tumult’ then build’s up to ‘Colouring of Pigeons’ the breathtakingly gorgeous pinnacle of 'Tomorrow, In a Year', an opera within an opera as it were.
With 'Tomorrow, in a Year' The Knife manages to capture the essence evolution, without sounding pompous or fabricated. The album combines raw electronic noise with minimalistic string arrangements and classical vocals to create a sound that is both cruel and beautiful, but above all captures the gradual, organic character of evolution. Agreed, this is nothing like their previous works. Apart from techno track ‘Seeds’ and electro pop conclusion ‘The Height of Summer’ the band makes a clear separation between their work as a pop artist and this particular project. And agreed, it is an extremely difficult album to like. But then again, The Knife really isn’t a band that stays within the confines of what you would expect. Either way, those who figured they had an clear vision of what a Knife-opera should sound like after listening to ‘Marble House’ were badly mistaking. Whether or not that’s a good thing is a matter of personal taste but I can only applaud the way in which Karin and Olof took the concept so much further. After Fever Ray’s eponymous debut in 2009, this a second hole-in-one in two years for the Dreijer family. Hopefully they’ll be going for the hat trick soon.
Tracklist
| 1. | Intro | 4:32 |
| 2. | Epochs | 5:43 |
| 3. | Geology | 4:24 |
| 4. | Unpheaved | 3:03 |
| 5. | Minerals | 1:18 |
| 6. | Ebb Tide Explorer | 7:06 |
| 7. | Variation Of Birds | 6:41 |
| 8. | Letter To Henslow | 2:01 |
| 9. | Schoal Swarm Orchestra | 8:36 |
| 10. | Annie's Box | 4:28 |
| 11. | Tumult | 3:28 |
| 12. | Colouring Of Pigeons | 11:01 |
| 13. | Seeds | 9:00 |
| 14. | Tomorrow In A Year | 12:20 |
| 15. | The Height Of Summer | 3:57 |
| 16. | Annie's Box (Alt. Vocal) | 4:54 |
0 comments:
Post a Comment