I’ve had my ear to the ground about this project recently and it’s finally here. Sorta. The Knife, in collboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, will release a digital opera based on Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” on March 1 but you can check out the first single, “The Colouring of Pigeons” from the opera (do opera’s have singles?) embedded below and you can stream the entire opera over at NPR (but only until February 2).

I gave the whole opera a listen yesterday and it gets 10/10 on originality. Though Peters, our music critic in residence, deemed the first 30 minutes unlistenable, I kept myself occupied by trying to figure out if they were going for some kind of symbolism. The evolution of life was pretty boring for the first few billion years. Probably worse than watching paint dry. Why should the opera version be any different? Wait. It’s not that bad. Just like most people only read a book once, I enjoyed listening to the beginning once. After that it starts getting more and more interesting hitting The Knife’s usual notes in the process.

And the single: breathtaking. Percussion heavy. Layered with different voices singing about the life of Darwin:

Northern forms existed in their own homes
thousand yellow – cocoons
under over – through

While later on a soprano belts out beautiful melodies while Karen Dreiker Andersson of The Knife laments being away from home for so long on his 5 year voyage on The Beagle:

That I will once again be home

I listen to it and pretend all the other douches on the bus are lower forms of life slowly evolving in primordial ooze.

By the way, if anyone wants a great biography of Charles Darwin read The Origin by Irving Stone, probably the most researched body of work on Darwin’s life out there. I couldn’t put it down. Seriously.