Of all the acts cross-pollinating dance music and rock in the mid-2000s, few were as gleefully fun as Danish trio WhoMadeWho. Named for the AC/DC song, the band showed up in 2004 with "Two Covers for Your Party", a split 12" on which they rendered Mr. Oizo's ear-worming, puppet-moving "Flat Beat" and Benny Benassi's robotically sexual dancefloor staple "Satisfaction" in the style of loose disco-rock. Fleshing out the latter's Mac voice duet with a sneering Sex Pistols accent and house diva vocals for good measure, the 12" was great silly fun.
WhoMadeWho kept the lighthearted mood largely intact for their self-titled debut full length the following year, bassist Tomas Hoffding singing frivolous lyrics in gliding falsetto or louche sotto voce while drummer Tomas Barfod (aka electronic producer TomBoy) and jazz-vet guitarist Jeppe Kjellberg crafted upbeat grooves. Follow-up The Plot was equally lightweight in its lyrics, but the music was starting to show the slightest signs of mellowing-- the bass lines were a little less rubbery, the drumming a little less cluttered, the guitar riffs a little less gaudy, everything just a little less exuberant. For Knee Deep, the band has made the leap from Gomma, a label specializing in playful disco, to Kompakt, long-reigning kings of melancholy minimal-techno pop, and they continue their gradual slide toward chillier, moodier dance rock.
The album opens with the ponderous "There's an Answer", foghorn synths blowing in the background, while Hoffding sings about a contemplative walk on the beach. "Every Minute Alone" starts on a similarly dour note-- all tense chiming guitar and low vocal groans-- but it eventually picks up speed, seesawing synth and vocals swelling to a crescendo before breaking into a coda of righteously squealing saxophone. It's like this throughout the album-- one morose moment gives way to a brief fit of action, then back again; kinetic dance grooves are anchored by downcast melodies and lyrical sentiments.
Or maybe it's more that the whole album plays like a bad mood gradually being shaken off, so that by the second half, it almost feels like that party where three Danish jokers were covering "Flat Beat" for you just a moment ago. "Two Feet Off Ground" revs things up nicely, with busy ping-ponging synth arpeggios and genuinely rocking drums. The album goes out on the strobing rave-up of "555" before tacking on a few negligible remixes of "Every Minute Alone", the best of which comes from Kompakt boss Michael Mayer, who gives it a typically slow, stretched-out treatment, with just a hint of acid in the muffled distance.
Certainly, the contrast of big tunes and bummer moods isn't a new approach for rock/electronic hybrids-- acts from New Order on up through Cut Copy and Hot Chip have long worked that intersection to great effect-- and even the downbeat songs are spiked with lively touches: the rippling kick drums on "All That I Am", the vamping, icy synths that emerge out of "Musketeer"'s murk. This is still playful stuff, just more subtly so. But to see WhoMadeWho settle into this mode feels like a significant loss of joie de vivre from a group who were once some of dance music's most flagrant disco clowns.
