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Mar 01, 2018 Iceage By Christopher Roberts

Denmark’s Iceage have announced a new album, Beyondless, and shared a new song from it, “Pain Killer.” Beyondless is due out May 4 via Matador. It includes “Catch It,” a song they shared a video for a few weeks back. Listen to the horn backed “Pain Killer” below (it almost sounds like a punk Go! Team). Also below are the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as their upcoming tour dates. The band also shared an essay on the album by 1970s punk legend Richard Hell, which is below too.

Iceage-Elias Bender Rønnenfelt (vocals, lyrics), Jakob Tvilling Pless (bass), Dan Kjær Nielsen (drums), and Johan Wieth (guitar)-produced the album with Nis Bysted. It was recorded all-analog by Mattias Glavå at Kungsten Studios in Göteborg, Sweden. The band’s last album was 2014’s Plowing Into the Field of Love. Rønnenfelt also released two albums with Marching Church, 2015’s This World Is Not Enough and 2016’s Telling It Like It Is.

Here’s Richard Hell’s essay:

“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 music journalists like me are the most suspect examples). 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 hyper literate. 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 of four 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” 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 from paradise 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?”

Beyondless Tracklist:

1. Hurrah
2. Pain Killer
3. Under the sun
4. The day the music dies
5. Plead the fifth
6. Catch it
7. Thieves like us
8. Take it all
9. Showtime
10. Beyondless

Iceage Tour Dates:

Thu. March 22 - Brooklyn, NY @ Kinfolk - NYC residency
Fri. March 23 - Brooklyn, NY @ Kinfolk - NYC residency
Sat. March 24 - Brooklyn, NY @ Babycastles - NYC residency
Sun. March 25 - Brooklyn, NY @ Secret Project Robot - NYC residency
Thu. March 29 - Los Angeles, CA @ Gold Diggers Bar - LA residency
Fri. March 30 - Los Angeles, CA @ Gold Diggers Bar - LA residency
Sat. March 31 - Los Angeles, CA @ Gold Diggers Bar - LA residency
Sun. April 1 - Los Angeles, CA @ Gold Diggers Bar - LA residency
Tue. April 3 - Kyoto, JP @ Metro - Kyoto/Tokyo residency
Fri. April 6 - Tokyo, JP @ Duo - Kyoto/Tokyo residency
Sun. April 8 - Tokyo, JP @ Vacant - Kyoto/Tokyo residency
Wed. May 2 - Copenhagen, DE @ Hotel Cecil
Fri. May 4 - Berlin, DE @ Private Club
Sat. May 5 - Amsterdam, NE @ Bitterzoet
Sun. May 6 - Brussels, BE @ La Nuit de Botanique
Mon. May 7 - Paris, FR @ Petit Bain
Tue. May 8 - London, UK @ Scala
Thu. May 10 - Seattle, WA @ Nordic Museum
Wed. May 16 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
Thu. May 17 - Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church
Fri. May 18 - Washington, DC @ Union Stage
Sat. May 19 - Richmond, VA @ The Camel
Sun. May 20 - Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle
Mon. May 21 - Nashville, TN @ Mercy Lounge
Tue. May 22 - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
Wed. May 23 - Birmingham, AL @ Saturn
Thu. May 24 - New Orleans, LA @ Santos
Fri. May 25 - Houston, TX @ Rockefeller’s
Sat. May 26 - Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
Sun. May 27 - Austin, TX @ Barracuda
Tue. June 5 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah *
Wed. June 6 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent Theater *
Thu. June 7 - Felton, CA @ Don Quixote’s International Music Hall *
Fri. June 8 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall *
Sat. June 9 - Sonoma, CA @ Huichica Music Festival *
Mon. June 11 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios *
Tue. June 12 - Vancouver, BC @ The Astoria *
Thu. June 14 - Spokane, WA @ The Bartlett *
Fri. June 15 - Bozeman, MT @ The Rialto *
Sat. June 16 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court *
Sun. June 17 - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater *
Mon. June 18 - Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room *
Tue. June 19 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry *
Wed June 20 - Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club *
Fri. June 22 - Detroit, MI @ El Club *
Sat. June 23 - Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace *
Sun. June 24 - Ottawa, ON @ The 27 Club *
Mon. June 25 - Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa *
Tue. June 26 - Portsmouth, NH @ 3S Artspace *
Wed. June 27 - Boston, MA @ The Sinclair *
The. June. 28 - New York, NY @ Market Hotel *

* = with Mary Lattimore

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