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Review: 'Iceage'
'Shake the Feeling: Outtakes & Rarities 2015–2021'   

-  Label: 'Mexican Summer'
-  Genre: 'Punk/New Wave' -  Release Date: '23rd September 2022'

Our Rating:
Call it synchronicity, call it coincidence, call it what you will, but just the other day I was involved in a discussion about the various historical venues of York, where I reside and have done for two spells: 1994-1999, and 2004-present – and Bar Lane Studios cropped up. The short-lived basement space played host to Ice Age early in their career.

The venue is no more, and all mention of the gig, which if memory serves was even featured in NME, have seemingly vanished from the Internet – so much for an eternal archive of everything in the virtual domain. But at the time, Iceage were a hot topic, controversial up-and-comers who were still under scrutiny and the subject of debate in the British press, including the broadsheets, for their apparent flirtations with fascism and right-wing extremes. ‘Do the hipster Danish band really sympathise with xenophobic, white supremacists? An article that appeared on ‘Collapse Board’ this week suggests they do, and has provoked much discussion,’ wrote ‘The Guardian’ in February 2013, under the headline ‘Iceage and the rightwing accusations that won’t go away’.

Of course, this ultimately just proved to be so much spurious bollocks with the press whipping up antagonism for the sake of a story that would last five minutes. The accusations did ultimately go away, but the band are still here, albeit with a relatively low profile here in the UK. That’s our loss, and we’re looking like we need to start getting used to things being our loss, particularly when it comes to overseas bands touring small venues in the UK.

As the press release outlines, the record ‘is made-up of a collection of non-LP cuts (or “misfit children,” as Elias describes them) from the seven years during which Iceage made ‘Plowing Into the Field of Love’ (2014), ‘Beyondless’ (2018), and ‘Seek Shelter’ (2021).’

‘Shake the Feeling’ is, by its nature, a bit of a patchwork of offcuts, but it’s all a far cry from the urgent, angular assault, accompanied by striking and contentious images of flames and balaclavas that heralded their arrival with ‘New Brigade’. I’m not about to slight a band for maturing, particularly when it only served to illustrate that the controversy was the product of naïve youthful provocation. So while the output of the last eight years may lack the same serrated edges, it’s by no means bad, and this album showcases the work of a band who can write songs.

‘All The Junk on the Outskirts’ is a spiralling slice of psychedelic indie, which is the dominant form across the majority of the tracks. But then, ‘Shake the Feeling’, which gives the collection its title, calls to mind Dinosaur Jr circa ‘You’re Living All Over Me’, and ‘Balm of Gilead’ has more of the swagger of The Rolling Stones as filtered through the lens of The Black Angels, and ‘Namouche’ would seem to owe something of a debt to The Fall’s rendition of ‘Jerusalem’. Of course, ‘maturity’ is relative, and the ramshackle rough and ready roustabout ‘I’m Ready to Make a Baby’ suggests they’re not ready to shuffle off into adult-orientated mediocrity for the time being. The production remains ragged and immediate, and while they’ve clearly evolved, they’ve not sold out, making ‘Shake the Feeling’ a decent listen. It’s not quite their ‘Incesticide’, but with the driving ‘Order Meets Demand’ standing out by a mile, it’s close enough.

  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Iceage - Shake the Feeling: Outtakes & Rarities 2015–2021