Review: The Knee-Hi’s — Razzle Dazzle
Music
The Knee-Hi’s
Razzle Dazzle
Self-Released
Street: 07.13.2025
The Knee-Hi’s = The Cramps + The Waitresses
By some sort of cosmic miracle, I was introduced to The Knee-Hi’s, a Chicago-based nightmare rock group, through a recommendation of their song “Make You Mine” from the all-knowing and all-loving Apple Music algorithm. It struck me as one of the most creative songs I’d heard up to that point in life, so I listened to the rest of the album, Charmed. I loved it! It was nostalgic and sweet, angry and bitter and it’s probably one of my most listened-to albums ever. Charmed is addictive.
Since then — which would’ve been 2022, I think— I’ve been keeping an eye on them. They’ve been drip-feeding fans music and videos (which have a killer aesthetic, by the way) for the last three years, leading up to their newest album Razzle Dazzle. It’s crunchier and more nostalgic than Charmed, but it is more of the same thing.
Is that a bad thing? NO! I believe that too much of a good thing is a good thing.
If there’s anything this band is great at, it’s their lyrics. I fell in love with them after hearing “Make You Mine,” a disturbing song about a woman stalking a man, because it’s played like high octane, true love. “Listen up, boys, here’s a taste of your own medicine,” Alice Strider sings.
“Formaldehyde” is charming. The romance between the singer and the subject is mundane, only for it to be blown out of proportion: “You help me with the taxes and the bills / Rеmemberin’ all the papеrwork that the government loves to shill / If not for you, they’d lock me away / For all of that shit I forgot to pay.”
The album goes from high energy tracks to low romance ballads à la Buddy Holly — like “Tomorrow,” a sickeningly sweet song that describes a relationship worth holding onto as long as they’re both there.
That somber and loving tone is more prevalent than it was in Charmed, which was more bitter and vapid. There are songs on that album that remind me of The Cramps, specifically their album …Off the Bone, which took classic songs like “Surfin’ Bird” and “Lonesome Town” and twisted them into bizarre, whiny, crunchy but recognizable tunes.
Razzle Dazzle’s sound got crunchier, yet it leans harder into nostalgic instrumentation. So much of this album has a jazzy swing heard in classic rock. It’s still kickass punk music, but with a much bigger heart. Does this tonal shift stop them from clowning on loser men? No.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be with you / You’re a little shit and you know it too / You don’t know what it’s like to be with you,” Strider sings. Anyway, listen to The Knee-Hi’s. —B. Allan Johnson
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