Iceage’s first record in five years, For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, was created at the top of a hill in the middle of the dense forests of western Sweden during a seven-day lock-in. “You can create this submarine-type environment where nothing exists but the recording,” frontman Elias Ronnenfelt tells us, “everybody eats and sleeps together. I like that you submerge yourself into this territory, and you don’t race up to the surface until it’s done.” Where comfort breeds complacency, Iceage hurtle towards friction and constraint. The resulting music is break-neck and raw as ever. ‘At a moment’s notice, you wrecked the ship/One error, then you’re fucking dead, boy’ – the opening line of lead track, Ember, is a warning shot fired to those who doubt the process, driving into a chorus that soars and dives between frustration and infatuation, tenderness and ruin. That tension between light and dark runs through the record, and the band’s wider catalogue. Rough riffs and smooth serenades. Visions of death and despair set against declarations of love and devotion. 

To celebrate the release of For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, Iceage returned to the intensity and intimacy of their DIY beginnings, playing a string of shows in a cramped Copenhagen venue and tiny London pubs. It’s where the band are at their most vital, thriving in the unpredictability and euphoria of a room utterly immersed. We joined them backstage at East London pub, The George, and got swept along for the ride.

Alex James Taylor: Hey Elias, how’ve you been?
Elias Rønnenfelt: I’ve been good. Well, I’ve been having a very relentless month and a half with constant touring, and I played in Christiania town in Copenhagen last night. Today I wake up with nowhere that I have to be, so I’m enjoying that I’ve made it through this quite intense period and I get a little bit of a break now.

AJT: I’ve just seen on your Instagram that you produced a song for Fousheé. It’s really good. Is that the first time you’ve produced for someone else?
ER: Yeah, I suppose it is. I technically produced a seven-inch by Lower ages ago, but this is the first time I’ve actually produced something for someone.

AJT: How was that experience?
ER: It was really good, we’d done a bunch of things. I had just finished Seek Shelter, and that album I did in my bedroom, so it was kind of this whole exploration to figure out how to do production with very limited means, having been this thing that happened entirely at the table in my bedroom. She called and said she was interested in production, and we had a phone call. I asked her what kind of images were going through her mind when she was thinking about this sound she was chasing, because music is such an abstract thing – words are not always helpful. She sent me a bunch of images, and I looked at them, and made the first things that came into my mind. We started sending things back and forth and eventually she came to Copenhagen. We huddled up in a studio, and mainly did lyrics and vocals in Copenhagen for a lot of songs, and it was a super fruitful period where we were relentlessly at the studio, but were able to sort of cohabit the workspace in a good way, where we could be tireless and focused, or unfocused and bullshitting. We got a lot done, and it was really interesting to be in a position where you ultimately want to aid someone else.

AJT: The track sounds great, as does For Love of Grace & the Hereafter – congrats on that, it’s such a strong album. With each new Iceage album, there’s always a new reveal, a new side to the band. I know you went back to Silence Studio for this record, which is where you recorded Plowing Into the Field of Love. What was the reason behind going back, and how did that affect this album?
ER: I would think that the reason that Iceage albums change, or at least bring something new to the table, is because I don’t think life is a replica of itself, and what we do is always directly intertwined with the state of things – it needs to represent and honour the period that it was created in. I would never want to phone it in and just try and write an Iceage album that sounded like an Iceage album. It needs to be something that is gripping us in the moment.

We did go back to Silence for the reason that we wanted to give ourselves a shorter time in the studio than we’ve been used to. I mean, the early albums were even less studio time, but this one we were like, “OK, seven days feels like too little, but it will do.” We were pondering a lot of different studios – maybe we go to Berlin – and we’ve always had this policy in Iceage that we don’t return to studios, which is this not very thought-through policy, but just kind of an idea that each album belongs to a space. There’s a nice thought in that. But because we were giving ourselves so little time, we needed something we could depend on, and Silence was always our favourite studio. It’s on the top of a hill in the middle of the woods, in an old tree house, and there’s just something about it that we felt so at home in. Time was drawing near to have to record the album, and we started reminiscing about Silence and how much we loved that place. Then we started talking about how sad it was that we could never return, because that’s the rule. Then I think one of us said that if we’ve got this stupid rule, then we’ll never ever return to that place that we love so much again. There was enough argument to break this damn rule and go back up there.

“It just left no time to be fucking wasted.”

AJT: When you record in nature, in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere, does that affect you, compared to recording in a city, where you’ve got the pace, the noise, the crowds?
ER: Well, the first Iceage album was recorded in three days in the suburbs of Copenhagen.

AJT: Rapid.
ER: Three days is more impressive because the city life just… I think it was the summer, and people were turning up like, six hours too late, every day, hungover – it wasn’t productive. We managed to get an album done anyway, impressively, but that kind of started us always leaving the city to record. It’s also this kind of boot camp element. I like creating a space where it feels like nothing else exists, and everybody’s sleeping in the same place. There’s something about everybody at the end of the night departing to their own bedrooms, making coffee in their own kitchens, and then returning to the studio that makes people too comfortable. But if you can create this submarine-type environment where nothing exists but the recording, and everybody eats and sleeps together, I like that you submerge yourself into this territory, and you don’t race up to the surface until it’s done.

AJT: When you set yourself seven days, is there any fear that it just won’t be done? It won’t work, it won’t gel, it won’t flow, and you’ll come away with nothing?
ER: I mean, I didn’t think we were going to come out with nothing, but it just left no time to be fucking wasted. It makes it so that you’re always on the matter at hand, and if something isn’t working and needs to be tried again, you need to think fucking quick, because you can’t sit and ponder something for even half a day. It causes the instinct to go into survival mode and create solutions, and think on your feet very quickly. If you dwell on things, the time has gone away and you leave without the thing being done. But it also didn’t feel stressed either – we were having fun with it.

AJT: When you’re out there, how much time is spent with the music, and how much time is spent doing other things?
ER: Sometimes they need to set up mics for a particular thing, and then you can walk in the forest or do a little thing. Also, for the first time ever, we did an extremely smart move of bringing a chef, so we didn’t really have to think about preparing meals and stuff. That was a great luxury to allow ourselves.

AJT: I love the idea of musicians locking themselves away to record, having this separation from the world outside.
ER: Yeah, especially when it’s a group effort. It does become a thing where you feel like you’re all manning a ship. Everybody has their function, and there’s an idea of knowing where to go.

AJT:  Before you went into the studio, did you share ideas, references, images with each other in terms of sound and atmosphere for the record?
ER: Well, we wanted it to be a record that happened mostly in the rehearsal space. The studio part was not something where we go into a state of great exploration or finding ourselves. That’s why labels and people were asking if we wanted to work with a producer who’s produced a bunch of seminal records or something. I talked to a couple of producers, and it’s like, man, I don’t need you to help me find ourselves. We know where we want to go. In the end, we just went in there with a skeleton crew of the people we always work with because it was not necessary for somebody to come in and contribute outside elements. We were so fixed in knowing what we wanted to do. We wanted it to be stripped back, and very much just a band. We wanted to go up into a studio with everything ready, press record, and then just go off. Some of the core ideas when it came to writing these songs were writing something that was totally bereft of any unnecessary ornamentation, and just trying to get very much into the bone of these songs. We wanted it to be fast, and we wanted it to be raw.

“We wanted it to be fast, and we wanted it to be raw.”

AJT: It feels very bright as well. I remember speaking to you in the Marching Church days, and you mentioned Copacabana by Barry Manilow, how it’s this fun and light song on the surface, but when you actually listen to the lyrics, it tells a dark story about murder and deceit.
ER: I still love that song.

AJT: Listening to this album, one of the songs I love is Match Head Girl, and it’s got those doo-doo-doos. It’s almost quite poppy, but then it’s got these dark undercurrents to it, and I really like the way you play with the light and dark.
ER: Maybe I’ve fulfilled the prophecy and finally entered my Barry Manilow fate. [both laugh]

AJT: You’ll be doing cruise ships next.
ER: I’ll be there, man. But yeah, that was another thing with writing these lyrics – I wanted every single sentence to be voluptuous and drenched in imagery. I wasn’t going for simplicity. I was following my proclivity and tendency to over-voluptuise words for what a song can contain. I bet some people don’t even listen to lyrics when they listen to music – but I wanted it to be extremely overgrown, image to image to image to image. Some of these songs or compositions, they’re quite bright, but there is definitely a lot of juxtaposition between this so-called brightness and lyrics that are quite manifold and sticking their heads in many directions. 

“Music, we can sort of align on, but album artwork – that’s the shit that pulls teeth.”

AJT: You recently played a series of intimate gigs in London pubs. How was it going back to doing these smaller rooms, being amongst the crowd?
ER: They were really great. We did one in Copenhagen as well, which was in a bigger venue but felt just as intense as the pub shows in London. We didn’t finish the record until February – it’s just extreme luck that we were able to put it out so fast – so everything feels very fresh to us as well. The shows have just been completely… there’s been so much spirit. The crowds have been fucking great. We’ve been playing the new record from start to finish, and by the day after it came out, people already seemed to know the lyrics back to back. It was back to playing these tiny rooms, and it was chaotic and sweaty. There was a heatwave going on in London and I’ve played horribly temperatured shows, but this was extreme. You felt like you were going to faint, but the energy kept things moving. It felt really good, I can say that.

AJT: It’s like an extension of the intensity in which the record was recorded.
ER: Yeah, and I mean, I was on a solo US tour leading up to those Iceage gigs and going straight from there. When I came back, the band had also rehearsed like never before. We were never that big on rehearsing, historically, [laughs] but when I came back with all these new songs, the band was just tight like never before. So it was also interesting to do these extremely chaotic small-space gigs that we did a lot of when we were starting up. We know what to do in those spaces, but it was also with a new sort of command that the band has reached. It felt like we were at a high point.

“Maybe I’ve fulfilled the prophecy and finally entered my Barry Manilow fate.”

AJT: Lastly, I want to ask you about the album artwork by Elizabeth Peyton. You’ve known each other for a while, and worked on Sunken Heights together. Why did you choose this piece for the album?
ER: The relationship with Elizabeth goes quite far back. My manager initially said – this would have been around 2013 – “There’s this American painter who wants to paint you,” and I said no, because that was my default answer to everything. He was like, “I think you should go do this,” and I was like, “Alright.” I did some sittings for her, and you sit there, and then you start talking. She’s a really lovely person, and we built up a good friendship over the years. She’s a great painter. We had to find the artwork for this record, and the deadline was drawing close. There were a lot of ideas up in the air, and none of them seemed to fit. There was a kind of general desperation and fatigue that we just couldn’t come up with anything that felt worthy of the record. A couple of days before the deadline, I was thinking about people I knew who did art, and I stumbled upon this picture by Elizabeth called Kiss. It was just like, “Oh god, there it is.” I sent it to the boys, and there was a unanimous yes, which is so rare, because where Iceage really fights it out is album cover artwork. That’s where shit gets heated. Music, we can sort of align on, but album artwork – that’s the shit that pulls teeth. Everybody could see it, and Elizabeth was down for us to use it. It’s got this kiss at the centre, and you can make out the faces, but there’s also this movement and blurry energy. I think it encompasses the feel of the record really well, so I’m glad we ended up there.

Iceage’s new record For Love of Grace & the Hereafter is out now.