Iceage is a punk band that doesn't make punk music. Since forming in Copenhagen in 2008, the band has fermented the passion and urgency of punk and distilled it over several cold Danish winters. They're a potent live act, discharging a heavy stew of Bad Seed energy and drawls from singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, who is almost too boyband-pretty to get away with it. He's also a rather polarising frontman.
The band are playing in Bangkok this Saturday, but they've played here before, in 2015, and not everyone liked it. The guy snapping a pic who got his phone slapped to the ground by Rønnenfelt didn't like it. Local music writer Dave Crimaldi didn't like it, saying he hated the band from the second they got on stage. But those who appreciated a performance that was both provocative and insouciantly narcissistic dug Rønnenfelt's preening and darkly charismatic presence. Writer and musician Joe Cummings describes the band as sounding like "what might have happened if a young Jagger had taken the red pill, and joined forces with the likes of Mark Eitzel and Nick Cave".
Iceage attracts hyperbole. Journalists overwrite and celebrity fans gush. Vice stated that "to love Iceage is to love wildly, without rhyme or reason". Punk icon and fanboy Richard Hell, in an essay on the band (yes, Iceage is a band that inspires essays), name-dropped Baudelaire and Genet. Iggy Pop played it cooler, simply calling them the only current band he can think of "that sounds really dangerous".
Their new album, Beyondless, supplements the driving guitars with poppy horns and even a guest appearance by Sky Ferreira, but Rønnenfelt's lyrical preoccupations remain poetic, moody and murderous. The band has slowed down and sharpened its songwriting, with the music lurching from driving to drunken riffs. It's a great album, and as with each preceding Iceage record, Pitchfork has bestowed Best New Music accolades.
The band plays the capital's most interesting live-music venue, Bangkok Island, on Saturday, June 1. Bangkok Island is actually a boat that cruises up the Chao Phraya River while the band plays in the hull and the riverbank lights slide past the windows. Support comes from Thai post-rockers Dogwhine and electronic experimentalists Rock Shreller, playing songs from their recently released and well-received album Wildly Inappropriate.
You should attend the gig if you've recently witnessed a concert so banal that you believe no real emotion remains in modern music. You should attend the gig if you believe in artistic provocation over commercialism. And even if you end up hating the singer, there's a good chance you'll enjoy hating him.
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