The voices are deadpan and phlegmy and the synths unabashedly celluloid, but the Knife are far different than most of their electro-pop contemporaries. Perhaps that's either because they toss the genre's grainy trashcan beats in favor of gentler, funked-up MIDI rhythms, or because when they sing about fucking someone's brains out they make sure back it up with mundane scene-setters like, "I'll order a chai tea and you will have the usual au lait". Either way, Karin and Olof Dreijer have hatched an album that works where so many others fail, proving that fun needn't be spooned with irony.
Every pop duo seems to need a gag, and The Knife's is familial: The Dreijers are siblings, and Deep Cuts is teeming with winking incestuous undercurrents. "I'm in love with your brother," sings Karin Dreijer over a popping steel drum melody on "Pass This On", and it's unclear if she's being addressed or what. Elsewhere, the lyrics are generally about parties and sex, dating and relationships. But, nevertheless-- topics that few sibling acts would so affably address.
The Knife don't seem to care much about how their lyrics are interpreted. Instead, they're preoccupied with cheeky and lascivious synth sounds: hollow, creeping mallet instruments ("One for You"), glowing arena glides ("You Take My Breath Away"), and spitting saw-waves that grab for echoing space ("You Make Me Like Charity"). The varieties usually don't intertwine, except on "Heartbeats", Deep Cuts' first single and by far its standout track.
Besides being densely layered and exquisitely written, a grandiose, saw-heavy track like "Heartbeats" is a wistful, quixotic dancefloor closer. Bands seldom make albums full of songs like these, but you almost wish the Knife did. That's because "Heartbeats" is so out of step with the rest of Deep Cuts. Lodged in the opening slot, its plasticized emotional bombast stands apart from the album's general malaise. "You Make Me Like Charity" is cheap, austere and vulgar; "Heartbeats" is warmer and brimming with existential urgency. Karin conquers her apathy and belts like a less anglophilic Madonna. The beat is thick and shifty, providing a solid foundation for the layers and layers of cascading melody. And though you might expect a track of such intensity to spoil quickly, "Heartbeats" has a durable shelf life.
Even though its strongest song is a head-scratching blip on the radar, Deep Cuts is still an impressive effort. "She's Having a Baby" is as misleading as it is delightfully twisted. Beneath french horn, vacillating sustained pad swells, and Olof's languid vocals, the track's coruscating music box melody suggests something slightly and eerily askew. Elsewhere, "Girls' Night Out", with its whirring synth zaps and fast clicking pulse, could score the bomb detonation scene in a techie thriller if not for carpe diem salvos like, "and we ride through the moonlight, far beyond." If the Knife want to make merely good records, they need only to make up their mind; but let's hope they strike a balance between the quaking sentimentality of "Heartbeats" and the svelte realism of their other songs and start making great ones.
