‘B-sides’ is only half the story on this new collection from Iceage.
Sometimes things get lost in translation.
On the surface, explaining the background to Shake The Feeling: Outtakes & Rarities 2015-2021 is easy: it’s a gathering of material recorded by Iceage over the seven years during which they released the albums Plowing Into The Field Of Love (2014), Beyondless (2018) and Seek Shelter (2021).
As ever though, things are a bit more complicated than that. For a start, the Danish band – Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, Johan Suurballe Wieth, Jakob Tvilling Pless and Dan Kjær Nielsen – by their own admission suspected that they might not even survive their first US tour, let alone win rave reviews for their theatrical brand of noir-ish art punk and in the process become one of few bands from their home country to truly declare themselves international.
A mere B-sides album this is not then, nor was it ever likely to be. The description they give it is simply, ‘a collection of misfit toys, by and for misfit toys’, a recognition that something as humble as throwing out a few cast-offs and calling it art would be subversive only if accompanied by another, bigger joke.
Saying that, there has always been a humour of sorts to Iceage’s work, and amongst these mostly orphaned works often lurks a knowing half wink.
At the end of the scale marked ridiculous is the clattering drawl of I’m Ready To Make A Baby, of which Elias has since confirmed that the freewheeling spontaneity of its creation meant that for obvious reasons they, ‘couldn’t in our right mind put it on an album’.
Just as timebound, Lockdown Blues was, he claims, ‘written one night, rehearsed on the second, and recorded on the third’, what’s left over emptying out all the uncertainty and frustration of an uncertain and frustrating period.
That it’s located towards the end of the dozen songs is not particularly because they needed to sequence the material chronologically – what’s here is presented in an order entirely predicated on making sense only to them.
At least Shelter Song has gone through an obvious transformation since its original appearance on Seek Shelter; then a Primal Scream-esque bluesy stomper complete with a choir and string section, now it’s more campfire and spotlights Wieth’s previously closeted abilities with the flute.
Those of you who don’t like flutes and were really happy when we were all allowed out of our houses again will be pleased to know there’s also plenty of red meat (or its plant-based equivalent) to get into, with opener All Junk On The Outskirts, Sociopath Boogie and Broken Hours each loading up a different facet of the Iceage’s skewed post-post-punk and slack jawed rock n’ roll to the max.
Arguably the most interesting segment however are the back-to-back covers (it’s not clear if that running order is intentional, but it probably is) that lodge about half-way through.
The thinking behind attempting them at all is one of the few things not explained, but the reworkings of Abner Jay’s My Mule and Bob Dylan’s I’ll Keep It with Mine are in sublimely different ways both radical deconstructions of the original vessel, answers to questions not even raised.
Just like Shake the Feeling: Outtakes & Rarities 2015-2021, there’s a degree of translation required before Iceage are happy for you to get the point. We’ll leave the final word inevitably to someone else; not just a record, this one anonymous source has said is, ‘a come-on delivered as a threat, a sexy invitation to get irretrievably lost’.
We’ll listen first, but then show ourselves out.
