I caught the Knife’s Shaking The Habitual live show at Sweden’s Way Out West festival last summer, and I hated it. Everyone I’ve spoken to about the group’s recent live shows either agrees with me or virulently disagrees. Their show is a divisive thing: A massive performance-art spectacle, full of modern-dance choreography and gaudy facepaint and not enough songs from Silent Shout. Watching it back then, I marveled that there would be no way an American audience would stand for this pretentious malarky. We’ll find out in a few months whether I was right or not.

The Knife had already joined the bill at Coachella, where they’ve got the just-down-from-OutKast second-headliner Friday-night spot. Today, they’ve announced that they’ll bring their live show to various other North American shows, though Coachella is the only festival on the itinerary. In a post on their website, the Knife write that they’ve reassembled to “rework” the live show, but they seem to affirm that it’ll still be something like what I saw in Sweden: “This is a continuation. Some songs are the same, some songs are new. Moves are added and changed. Some instruments are electrified and more voices are heard. Things glow and along the way we have elevated ourselves.” They’ve also added Light Asylum/!!! singer Shannon Funchess to their touring lineup, which is definitely a good thing. Here are the dates:

04/11 – Indio, CA @ Coachella
04/15 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
04/18 – Indio, CA @ Coachella
04/21 – Denver, CO @ Fillmore
04/23 – Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
04/25 – Toronto, ON @ Kool Haus
04/26 – Montreal, QC @ Metropolis
04/28 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues
04/30 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5

[photo by Olle Kirchmeier @ Way Out West]