The Knife in Munich

The Swedish band The Knife were all the rage a few years back. Their 2006 album Silent Shout was one of my favorites that year and received universal acclaim. The accompanying tour hid the band behind Venetian masks, mysterious enough at the time. Looking back, that now seems almost restrained.

The duo, siblings Karin and Olof Dreijer, come from my hometown of Gothenburg, which makes it feel faintly ridiculous that I have to travel all the way to Bavaria to see them perform. But curiosity has always been a stronger force than common sense, and I was really curious on how the band would evolve. Their newly released album Shaking the Habitual had abandoned almost every concession to accessibility, wandering deep into stranger territory. Karin’s parallel solo project, Fever Ray, had already proved that she knew how to turn a concert into an unsettling piece of theater, so I arrived in Munich expecting something unusual. Unfortunately I was right.

The city is baking under an early summer sun. Germans are enjoying a public holiday, cafés overflow onto the sidewalks and the banks of the Isar are packed with people who seem to have collectively decided that today is too beautiful to spend indoors. I walk through the hot streets and eventually make my way to Muffathalle, order a cold Helles and watch the crowd assemble.

Arriving at Muffathalle.

The opening act is American-Palestinian performance artist Tarek Halab, who conducts what appears to be an aerobics class from the mixer desk. It may have been high art. It may have been audience participation. Mostly it looked like synchronized confusion.

Then The Knife emerge. Or rather, a whole procession emerges. Karin and Olof are joined by what feels like half a theater company, all wrapped in oversized robes under murky lighting. For a brief moment it looks suitably ominous. Then, without warning, everyone explodes into elaborate Bollywood choreography. Wait what?

Almost the entire set is drawn from Shaking the Habitual. On record the songs are difficult, but live they become something even stranger, transformed into an avant-garde dance performance that constantly teeters between brilliance and absurdity. Somehow it works. Against all odds I find myself enjoying the glorious weirdness of it all.

Only two songs come from earlier albums, but the finale is worth the wait. Silent Shout arrives with a bass line that rattles the walls of Muffathalle while stark backlighting turns the stage into a series of silhouettes. For a few minutes I’m transported back to Arvikafestivalen in 2009, where Karin’s Fever Ray project flooded the Apollo tent with green lasers and enough low frequencies to rearrange internal organs.

Some concerts give you exactly what you expect. The Knife prefer to leave you wondering what on earth you have just witnessed.