“I’m telling you stories,” Karin Dreijer Andersson shrieks on the opening track “A Tooth For an Eye,” before letting rip with “Trust meeeeeeeeeeee-aaaaaaahhhhhh!” And what stories those are: On their long-awaited follow-up to their 2006 U.S. breakthrough Silent Shout, this Swedish brother-sister duo have crafted the musical equivalent of a Wes Craven horror movie for PhDs. Politics, feminism, gender studies, social class, “commercial homogenization,” as they state in their biography — all those weighty ideas are explored on 13 tracks.

Whether any of this makes sense in the hands of a press-shy, costume-wearing duo is another question. Andersson has long reveled in screwing around with audiences: She famously accepted a televised award in 2010 for her side project Fever Ray while wearing a mask that looked like molten flesh. And on Shaking the Habitual, she remains equally opaque: Plainspoken, politically-charged lyrics (“Not a vagina/ It’s an option!”) get masked with all sorts of vocal effects, shrieks, yelps, groans and grunts. Then there are downright silly sentiments: “A handful of elf pee/ That’s my soul.” Huh? Sure, Andersson and her brother Olof Dreijer have said in interviews that they want to challenge the listener’s understanding of race, class, sexuality, etc., on this… read more »