ICEAGE
For Love Of Grace & The Hereafter (Mexican Summer)
Early on, Iceage were a shock to the system: nihilistic teenage hardcore punks who cloaked themselves in a frisson of dangerousness through selling branded knives at their merch desk and – whether knowingly or not – flirting with fascist aesthetics. But then came a questionable reinvention as sophisticates and the grander Tindersticks pretensions of 2014’s Plowing Into The Field Of Love and its two successors, which saw the Danes metaphorically squeezed into ill-fitting suits as though for a court appearance.
Anyone hoping that a reunion with Nis Bysted, co-producer of Iceage’s first two albums, might signal a return to their thrillingly feral intensity is destined to be largely disappointed. For Love Of Grace & The Hereafter undoubtedly has its moments – not least the Idlewild-melodic Tender Blades, the taut-and-spiky-as-barbed-wire Holy Water, and rock‘n’roll ripper The Weak, complete with atonal recorder solo. But they still sound somewhat defanged and declawed; originally out on their own, Iceage are now part of the postpunk pack.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
