Iceage’s Elias Bender Rønnenfelt: “I’m Terrified of Nostalgia”
The frontman of Iceage tells Dean Mayo Davies about the band’s new album and why writing is a way of making sense of life for him
May 12, 2021
Lead ImageIceagePhotography by Mishael Phillip
“I’m sort of getting used to being statically in one place for the first time since I was a teenager,”
Iceage’s
Elias Bender Rønnenfelt shares over Zoom from his home in Copenhagen, where he’s been (behaving himself) for the past year. “You do find, first of all, you can create lots of mess in the city you’re from, you don’t have to run away to do that. And second of all you just find that the ideas start coming from different places, or there’s just another tempo to things.”
Rag’n’Bone Man, Weezer and Squid deliver the musical goods this week
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SQUID BRIGHT GREEN FIELD
Squid have embarked on a mission to bring ambition back to music, and their debut album is discordant and exciting.
Like Black Midi and Black Country, New Road (two members of the latter feature in a horn and string ensemble) they disdain simple song structures, and need repeated listening to uncover their depths. Squid take inspiration from the post-punk era, when anything and everything was allowed, as well as free jazz, funk, post rock, dub and other genres that encourage experimentation.
They are all scratchy guitars, dub bass, wonky time signatures, vocals that range from a whisper to a scream, as well as field recordings of ringing church bells, microphones swinging from the ceiling and a distorted choir of 30 voices.
Bandcamp / Buy
Iceage barrelled into the pit on their 2011 debut,
New Brigade, like a band disgusted with the idea of creation itself, as embodied by a death-staring frontmanâElias Rønnenfeltâwho delivered his manifestos as if spitting out the last remnants of puke in his mouth. In the decade since, theyâve undergone a metamorphosis even more surprising than their fellow gutter-dwellers the Men (who turned into Wilco) or the Horrors (who became Simple Minds): Theyâve embraced the light, one creeping step at a time, and on
Seek Shelter, they complete their transformation from grim-faced nihilists to wearied soothsayers, gospel choirs and all.
Albums Out Today: Iceage, dodie, Weezer, Squid, Czarface and MF DOOM, Miranda Lambert, Nancy Wilson
Iceage,
Iceage are back with their fifth album,
Seek Shelter, out now via Mexican Summer. The Danish rock outfit recorded the LP over the course of 12 days with help from producer Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3) at Namouche, a dilapidated wood-paneled vintage studio in Lisbon. It marks the first time the band have ever worked with an outside producer for one of their albums and their first full-length with guitarist Casper Morilla Fernandez. The follow-up to 2018’s
Beyondless,
Seek Shelter was mixed by Shawn Everett and was preceded by the singles ‘High & Hurt’, ‘Shelter Song’, ‘Vendetta’, ‘The Holding Hand’, and ‘Gold City’.