Before the release of their third
album, Iceage was a band with an uncontainable sound. Their songs screeched into your ears with
roaring guitars, crushing drums and shouted vocals— a massive sound that was
dumped into your ears in short, two-minute tracks. But between their second and third album,
Iceage has changed. A lot.
The malice is still there, but
“Plowing Into The Field Of Love” is infinitely more sophisticated and nuanced
than past Iceage material. The emotional
contrast, dynamics, tempo changes, and riffs on this record are all used
incredibly, and in a way that previous records showed no indication of. The
production and arrangements of these songs are incredible. Piano, horns and violin (violin!) pop up everywhere on these songs, and they feel
completely at home. The key is that the
extra instrumentation isn’t used in any cheap pop production type of way just
to “flesh out the sound” or anything like that.
The new instruments are key to the songs they inhabit, being used in
very unique ways that perfectly fit the sound that Iceage was going for. Just listen to the scratchy, dissonant violins
on “Against The Moon”, the song that goes furthest from their punk roots with
contemplative, spacious piano riffs, lush strings and horns, and no guitars to
be heard of.
This record is just a great
listen. It just gives you a feeling of
an entire world of sound opening up before you.
What will they do next? You
anticipate each song, each chorus with the enthusiasm, because you don’t know
what’s going to happen next, and it’ll probably be awesome.
Yet,
despite all of all this nuance and attention to detail, it’s important to say
that Iceage has not, will not, slow down.
This album isn’t nice. It rages, it
growls, it’s angry as hell. The lyrics
follow the raucous ups and destructive downs of a life of vice. “The Lord’s Favorite” stumbles through a night
of shameless, drunken debauchery at a strip club. “Abundant Living” begins with the lyrics, “I
will outnumber/I will outdrink/And crash through borders/Abundant living”. Yet, after the alcohol flows, we are taken to
a different place entirely, one of darkness, hopelessness and despair. “Cimmerian Shade” finds the narrator at the
depths of his depression, just wanting to be done with it all: “Let everything
be washed in white/Into long rolling waves of light.” Maybe my favorite song, “Against the Moon”,
is inspired by a Flemish painting of similar title (or so Rock Genius says), and is about how the narrator
finds his life directionless and unfulfilling, but he will continue on
regardless. “Whatever I do/I do not
repent/I keep pissing against the moon.”
The lyrics
complete this macabre, irate, and wonderful album, which has much more to say
than it seems on the first listen.
8.5/10
Favorite songs: The Lord’s Favorite, Abundant Living,
Forever, Against the Moon
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