Iceage – ‘Seek Shelter’ | Album Review

Danish outfit, Iceage, debuted their fifth studio album Seek Shelter, on May 7, 2021, via Mexican Summer. The album is an unprecedented work of art. Through Seek Shelter, Iceage flawlessly brings together an intricate mix of punk, post-punk, new wave, and classic rock sounds. No song has a predictable structure. Each song is an eclectic mesh of genre that continues to surprise the listener throughout the album because there is never a misstep.

You will be remiss if you don’t listen to this album on a good sound system. The details of each song are a sophisticated tangle. Seek Shelter births new sounds on each and every listen. Even if Iceage is not your personal cup of tea, if you have any appreciation for music over the last six decades, Seek Shelter is an essential listen.

Highlights here:

1. Shelter Song

We become each other’s sedatives
Giving shelter till the cloudburst dies down

• The album opens on a Viking ship porting into the Florida Panhandle. Elvish woodwinds blow until they collide into a southern-rock swamp guitar.
• Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s vocals start mellow but pick up as the song becomes more of a Poison-esque power ballad with a backing Baptist choir.

2. High & Hurt

Living life from the gutter up
Rattle with that unwashed cup

• A killer bass and symbol intro tap us into the song.
• Rønnenfelt’s vocals have a Joe Strummer rust to them.
• The song is mechanically very interesting. There is an upbeat Clash-like jitterbug melody dancing over a new-wave synth.

3. Love Kills Slowly

Love kills us
Time and time again
Circumcisions to our skin

• Filled with great mixing back vocals, Iceage presents listeners with a gloomy, desperado lullaby.
• This song is a long lost track from the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack.

4. Vendetta

Did you earn to belong here?
This ain’t no place for a sightseer

• ‘Vendetta’ surprises the listener and changes course in a darkly delightful and unanticipated way.
• The intro maracas are sinfully hot.
• ‘Vendetta’ was made for a tiki bar in space. If David Lynch were to direct a new Star Wars, this is the song playing at the Mos Eisley cantina.

5. Drink Rain

I’m not keen on pleasantries
And water is too pure for me
When I’m close to my love
I drink the rain

• ‘Drink Rain’ is the modern response to B.J. Thomas’ ‘Rain Drops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.’
• This song is a perfect retro 60s’ flashback, complete with brightly colored pencil dresses smoking long cigarettes under voluptuous buns in a crushed velvet club. Somewhere in New York, Holly Golightly is soaking wet and looking for her cat. .

6. Gold City

We’ve been nesting, we’ve been caught up, we’ve been domesticating
And although it seems so very hard to break with, we’ve broken it
They say that each day breaks, but this one had not been broken yet

• ‘Gold City’ is a beautiful revamp of a Bruce Springsteen harmonica and Jersey chord progression.
• ‘Gold City’ is an immediate standout of Iceage’s new album.

7. Dear Saint Cecilia

Love like an open lemon squeezed into the eye
Caged like a canary, mangled up and crucified
Short of keepsake in the shattered trophy case
So they’re cramming onward through the narrow gate of grace

• The drums start quiet, syncing up to your heartbeat and Iceage’s guitars before joy bursts through like a perfect white head splashing onto the mirror.
• This is the song to play while you’re cooking a frozen pizza in your kitchen after a night at the bar, as well as the ideal song for any upcoming teen movie montage.

8. The Wider Powder Blue

Cut the umbilical cord free
You’ll find your limbs so feathery
Bygone, carefree bygone
A wayward child was born
And sent a train through my head
And to this day it still carries on

• A sexy bass accompanies a twinkle bell guitar arpeggio.
• Pleasant horns weave in and out of the song giving it an extra thump.

9. The Holding Hand

See it come and see it go
As you find it then it’s lost
Far beyond the holding hand
In a pipe dream double-crossed

• This song is a moody close to a moody album.
• It begins with a creepy music box intro and includes flutey vampiric strings.
• It would be a shame if Scream 5 didn’t consider ‘The Holding Hand’ for its soundtrack.

You can find Iceage’s new album here

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Source: overblown.co.uk