Ice Cream Cathedral: Sudden Anatomy (Riot Factory) Review

Ice Cream Cathedral

Sudden Anatomy

Riot Factory

Jul 09, 2014 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

If you’re not familiar with this Danish group, run to YouTube and find their brilliant “The Swans” video: the nine-minute space opera finds our spacemen-musicians landing their ship on a strange planet and confronting a monster-sized puppy, like something out of a Roger Corman film. It’s the perfect vehicle to deliver this extended dose of chilly space-pop; the sci-fi visuals overlay a narrative arc on the music. On record—and without the plot to anchor it—the song becomes lost in its zero-gravity sprawl, floating away like the mythical Major Tom.

Sudden Anatomy, Ice Cream Cathedral’s international debut, is sometimes too weightless for its own good. It drifts away from itself in a few overstretched songs and in filler instrumentals that help the record feel less meaty than it actually is. Thankfully, the record is able to claw through its unchecked atmosphere-building and sink its gnarly teeth into the patient listener: the slow-tempo opener “The Spine of Lisa Ben” sets a tone that’s as sad as it is mysterious, and the alien modulation on singer Anja T. Lahrmann’s voice in “Equilibrium Part 1” wouldn’t have sounded out of place on St. Vincent’s last record. An intriguing LP, no doubt, but the best moments come when it feels like a course has been charted through all the spacey sonics. (www.icecreamcathedral.com)

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