The collected members of Iceage – Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, Johan Suurballe Wieth, Jakob Tvilling Pless and Dan Kjær Nielsen – felt it was unlikely they’d even finish their chaotic first American tour together in 2012, so for them to be issuing a retrospective covering their last three albums Plowing Into The Field Of Love (2014), Beyondless (2018) and Seek Shelter (2021) must feel like some achievement.
On the flipside it could be argued to the Danes – who’ve ridden natural outsiderdom – that a b-sides compilation is hardly rock n’ roll, a statement they’d agree with. It’s more the case that Shake The Feeling is a home for songs which the quartet loved enough, but couldn’t ever find a natural home anywhere else. Take the proecreational garage stub I’m Ready To Make A Baby, of which Elias has admitted they ‘couldn’t in our right mind put it on an album.’ That is of course up until now.
Not just a collection of tunes rattled off without much preparation then – with the did-it-in-24-hours exception of Lockdown Blues – but instead an all points bulletin for their take on primal garage rock and a few of the other dark musical corners they’ve explored. Inevitably it’s largely a for fans only excercise, but the perhaps unexpected highlight is a brace of covers in Abner Jay’s My Mule and Bob Dylan’s I’ll Keep It with Mine that are both satisfyingly different to the originals. Not bad for a band who didn’t think they’d see 2013 in still together.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 