Neues Album der Kopenhager Post-Punker Iceage erscheint im Mai.

Das ist: Online & Presse & Radio vom 1. März 2018
Neues Album der Kopenhager Post-Punker Iceage erscheint im Mai.

Nachdem die Kopenhagener Band Iceage zuletzt schon mit dem neuen Song „Catch It“ (Video hier) aufwartete, folgt jetzt die Ankündigung des Nachfolgers des 2014 veröffentlichten Albums „PlowingInto The Field of Love“: „Beyondless“ wird am 4. Mai via Matador Records erscheinen und zeugt davon, dass die Band bestehend aus Elias Bender Rønnenfelt (Vocals, Lyrics), Jakob TvillingPless (Bass), Dan Kjær Nielsen (Drums) und Johan Wieth (Gitarre) endlich ihre Ambitionen in die Tat umsetzt ohne den rauen Charakter der Anfangstage zu verlieren.

Zurück zum Anfang: „New Brigade“, das 2011er Debüt der Dänen ist ein jugendlich-ungestümer Post-Punk-Entwurf, voller kalter und distanzierter Abgrenzung, während der Nachfolger „You’re Nothing“ (2013) mit mehrheitlich aggressiven Hardcore-Einflüssen mehr Licht in die Dunkelheit lies – eine Tendenz, die auch auf „Plowing Into The Field Of Love“ (2014) ihre Fortsetzung fand. Bestechend dabei immer die unbekümmerte Selbstsicherheit der Jungs, mit der sie geradewegs mit dem Kopf voran Grenzen aufstoßen. Dieses entwaffnende Selbstbewusstsein klingt auch auf „Beyondless“ immer wieder durch, ohne an Charme einzubüßen.

Mehr zu „Beyondless“ gibt es in diesem Aufsatz von Richard Hell:

THE NEW ICEAGE
by Richard Hell

I can totally imagine myself as a kid lying in my closed-door room in the dark, listening to this band and getting what I need, the way a band can make a person feel seen and bring confidence, sometimes even represent an ideal. Or maybe I’m already all defiant and self-certain, and I identify with Iceage because they are too, and they’re who I want to represent me in music. It’s a weird combination of qualities that a rock and roll band and their recordings presents to their young crowd, imparts to them. The music being pure emotion, the strong emotions of youth —anger, sadness, contempt, longing—as well as energy and sex, and the band’s demonstration that it gracefully owns and provides those things, consoling their followers in all the confusion.
What is it that Iceage in particular brings? A large number of extraordinary things. (Poetry! But more about that later.) The band members were childhood friends, which is always good news. They’re like a small urban gang, faithful to each other, suspicious of outsiders (of which musicjournalists like me are the most suspec texamples). At the same time, they seem mature and competent, which is almost too much to hope for. They not only play and compose well, but the production of their records, from the very beginning, and at the music’s most chaotic, is impeccable. Their presentation is as hardcore anarchic as any, but much better played, mixed, and recorded than most.
And then there’s the poetry and the intelligence. The members of Iceage are not only smart but hyperliterate. Interviews with E. Rønnenfelt, the lead singer and lyricist of the band, find him mentioning Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye; Peter Shaffer’s Equus; Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea; Genet’s Thief’s Journal and Miracle of the Rose; The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau; Henry Miller on Writing; and James Agee’s A Death in the Family, and that’s in a total off our interviews. It’s not that he flaunts it; he’s simply honest and naturally acknowledges it.
The lyrics of Iceage songs have the most sophisticated vocabulary I can remember finding in rock music. Here’s a favorite example, from “Pain Killer” (ft. Sky Ferreira) on the new album:

Praying at the altar of your legs and feet
Your saliva is a drug so bittersweet
I’ll arrogate what’s there to take
In an evanescent embrace

…“Arrogate”??? I half know the word, but I had to look it up to be certain. It means “to claim or seize without justification.” It’s funny because its Latin root also underlies the word “arrogant,” which one might be tempted to apply to Rønnenfelt for the contempt he shows for people who try to understand him. But I sympathize. It is extremely annoying to be characterized by other people. And the shading of meaning of the word “arrogate” brings a subtlety to those lyrics of his that “take” or “seize” or “claim” wouldn’t. Frankly, though, what I really like about those lines is the concept of praying to his lover’s feet. That’s good. It makes me think of a similar instance in another poet, Charles Baudelaire, who wrote in his “Hymn to Beauty”:

Who cares if you come fromparadise or hell,
appalling Beauty, artless and monstrous scourge,
if only your eyes, your smile or your foot reveal
the infinite I love and have never known?


Iceage:
Beyondless
04.05.2018
Matador / Beggars Group / Indigo
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