Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine viewed that most of the album " consign [ s ] anything remotely hooky into the realm of affectation ", and the lyrics are " delivered by some of Karin's most obtuse vocal performances to date, her sinewy androgynous pipes muscling through slide-whistle octaves fearlessly and tunelessly . " Hayden Woolley of Drowned in Sound found the album " unnavigable and unknowable, almost impossible to write about and even harder to listen to . " " The Guardian " s Alexis Petridis felt that " " Shaking the Habitual " s problem is that the Knife seem to have dismissed the idea of making your point concisely as merely another affectation of a decadent and corrupt society ", describing the album as " alternately utterly gripping and unbearably boring; incredibly bold and strangely flaccid, viscerally thrilling and hopelessly over-thought ."
