On their first two albums,
Iceage
sounded like they were young, smart, and very angry, which was fitting enough since the Danish quartet were still in their teens when they cut their first record. But on their third album, 2014's
Plowing into the Field of Love
, the group has clearly been going through some changes. The intense, hardcore-influenced attack of
New Brigade
and
You're Nothing
has given way to a different but similarly passionate sound, with acoustic guitars, piano, and trumpets working their way into the mix, while arrangements leave room for a bit more open space. On numbers like "On My Fingers," "Abundant Living," and "How Many," the results bear a certain resemblance to what
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
conjured on mid-period albums like
The Good Son
Tender Prey
, though the purposeful slur of
Elias Bender Ronnenfelt
's vocals is something else again (given how much he sings about drinking on this album, maybe it's just a matter of getting into character). Blues and folk influences run through
, but they've been twisted by a funhouse mirror into new and sometimes disquieting shapes, while a stylized, arty approach to the arrangements shares space with shards of the band's sharply focused rock energy.
Jens Benz
Nis Bysted
's introduction is atmospheric but uncluttered, finding clean lines inside
's poetic howl, and the instrumentalists -- guitarist
Johan Surrballe Wieth
, bassist
Jakob Tvilling Pless
, and drummer
Dan Kjaer Nielsen
-- take to this music with the right balance of skill and abandon.
have done a fair bit of reinvention on
, but if the sound is less brutal, it's no less challenging, and emotionally this hits as hard as anything they've released to date. ~ Mark Deming