Iceage: "How Many"

Only a few years removed from their air-tight post-punk debut, Iceage are now breathing deeper. After “The Lord’s Favorite” and “Forever”, this latest Plowing Into the Field of Love cut is the most extreme expression of Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s imagination yet. Darkness has pervaded the Iceage songbook, but when “How Many” gloriously pries itself open—ominous, lopsided instrumentals and all—one can’t help but wonder what drama and desperation have been eclipsed all along. A band that was once thought to be dangerous is now more about daydreaming. “An alliance in body and mind/ Such a perfect lover I could become,” Rønnenfelt sings on this could-be ballad, straining his voice over the most common of desires.

Iceage give the menacing musicality of “From Her to Eternity” an infinite feeling—a dissonant mesh of blitzkrieg riffs and vocal jabs all kicked along by odd, atonal percussion, building to a moment of clarity. Rønnenfelt is lyrically accounting for everything that holds him back and everything he could become; all that keeps him treading water, when he ought to be sailing forward with the sparkling tide. He details insufferable disappointment, incurable longing, and the universally ineffable feeling of striving for perfection while lacking the capacity for it. “Trapped in a body that doesn’t act on thought,” he sings, ripping each word with care, “I have a sense of utopia/ Of what I truly ought to do.” Brutality is conveyed not with distortion but with piercing turns of phrase. 

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