Iceage was a deeply engrossing band when engaging in ireful, uncontrollable noise/post-hardcore storms (New Brigade / You’re Nothing). Iceage was a deeply engrossing band when agitating the fundamentals of its infancy, favouring countless genre inclusions and/or religious themes in musical tone or lyrics (Plowing Into the Field of Love / Seek Shelter).
Iceage is still deeply engrossing when opting purely for melody. The Copenhagen band’s ‘pipe and slippers’ album is a superior maturity to that of rock bands who play it safe deeper into their careers for the sake of broad appeal. For Love of Grace & the Hereafter is Iceage’s equivalent, yet it still wriggles out of the bounds of safety, of one genre, of one mood, of lapses in melodicism.
This is Iceage’s “love” album, clearly wishing to frolic with the biggest melodies Elias Ronnenfelt ever has in the name of love, but it still expands on the concept, captured by recurrent tonal shifts. The band quite often snaps in and out of a cowpunk-like style, bluesy whilst demonstrating punk’s simplicities, and you know, occasionally the opposite. The Weak is emblematic; Iceage’s most to-the-point southern-esque rocker, inviting the persistent slanging of old southern gospel with a kick up the ass. I never thought I wanted Iceage to sound like this – one would likely expect it reserved for Elias’s solo career – but the stripped-back rock songwriting is excellent. And if you do find it too clean, any contentment for the basics is undone by a hilariously dissonant recorder solo.
The album is lyrically overcooked; its determining of love falls victim to a lot of lost poetry alleviated usually when Elias sings in the first person; tantalising confessions, straight from the heart, round the album out on True Blue, where a chorus ends with “I am deranged, I am mentally ill”. He does a respectable job – especially when you consider that English is still a second language to him – of overseeing the queasier side of love on Ember, following an immediate concern in temperament with lyrical stamps “I love you in an ominous way” and “I caught you like an ember” with the melodic, heartfelt impact of Tom Waits’s Martha.
The band is still able to illustrate lovey emotions, and their extensions, regardless of whether or not the lyrics pull their weight. No Fear highlights the magnificence of love in its ignorance; a flashing, lightheaded mood, cut-out acoustic guitars, and classic ‘80s post-punk bass-picking courtesy of Jakob Pless. Mother-of-pearl is a classic pop rock song done right; contentment, happy roars and a tuneful chorus driven by a hearty ode to ensuing parenthood and living better. Much like The Weak, nobody would’ve assumed ten years ago that this kind of song would end up having any chance of being one of Iceage’s best.
Match Head Girl epitomises both the album’s ode to romance and its penchant for melody, even if its immediate “do-do-do-do” melodies are a tad in-your-face. Salve for Every Sore, on the other hand, epitomises the album’s shifts in tone in the form of an over-the-top, frantic guitar-bass interplay; an indie tremolo jangle atop cowpunk erraticism. Everything that Elias does on this album comes in handy on Salve; in his catchily uncalming rage, filling every possible beat with a syllable or two, he may as well be speaking in tongues or deranged conspiracy theories. The lyrics themselves are genuinely vivid – “we speak of all the worst of things, light up from the lingering maggot hidden in the apple / soothes all the griefs I know, dulls my pain and othered woe, tangled limbs lay on the feathered bed”.
The album almost runs out of ideas on its second half, but you’ll still find a few nuggets of love; Tender Blades’ nifty, emotive post-punk guitar work that fills the air with extra, Johnny Marr’s Modest Mouse days-esque melodies, cutting and brutal but pretty and memorable; 1835’s chorus, which will go down as one of the band’s most overlooked, sung with wildness and affection, bouncing around melodies with ease; Star’s unsteady chord phrasing; Holy Water’s riffs, which guitar and bass synchronise.
As the dispositions are juggled, as the melodies are plenty, Iceage has the potential to be at its very best at its most normal-sounding. It certainly helps that a “normal” Iceage is still sensitive, nasty, unreserved and informal. For Love of Grace & the Hereafter is the band’s best since Plowing Into the Field of Love.
Best tracks – Ember – The Weak – No Fear – Salve for Every Sore – Mother-of-Pearl.
Rating – 8.5 out of 10
