Seek Shelter

The former enfant terribles seem to have arrived at their final destination and sound more assured than ever before with Seek Shelter — a stunning achievement that will restore even the most lapsed practitioner's faith in rock music.

Seek Shelter is an album that surges irrepressibly from the outset and peaks at regular intervals over the course of its nine pieces. It represents Iceage’s most studied body of work to date.

Seek Shelter isn’t the big, era-defining statement, but a transitional album for the quintet, opening up the possibility of rock’n’roll in their arsenal. While this stylistic choice doesn’t fit 2021’s overarching trends, it proves just how good Iceage are at transforming their sonic interests into full-blown epics.

Even at its most sophisticated, Seek Shelter retains Iceage’s restless spirit.

Seek Shelter is a rich representation of Iceage’s bravery as a band.

Exploring increasingly adventurous songwriting terrains and expanding their studio capabilities whilst managing to retain some of the fire that once sparked up their engines, Iceage have delivered another tour de force.

Seek Shelter finds its success, not in the unabashed vibrancy of the performances, as was the case on the previous Iceage albums, but in the band’s need to experiment farther more than they ever have before.

A rollercoaster ride of diverse influences, the album takes us everywhere from nods to the freewheeling indie rock of ‘90s Jesus and Mary Chain (‘Dear Saint Cecilia’) to glossy, sixties-inflected love letters (‘Drink Rain’), via handsome, string-backed introspection (‘Love Kills Slowly’) and, on the standout ‘High & Hurt’, there’s a thrilling rework at the midpoint of the classic hymn ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken?’ that imbues it with moody menace.

All of this makes for a record that never sits still, an album of considerable polish and scope and by far the boldest thing the Danes have ever made, but also a album that still feels distinctly theirs.

Throughout Seek Shelter delivers the sort of ragged MC5/Stooges/Stones cocktail Primal Scream have spent a career trying to nail. [Jun 2021, p.85]

The big swings taken here serve them just as well as the coiled intensity of their first releases. [Jun 2021, p.27]

Seek Shelter is ultimately less effective in its catchiness and sheer force, considering its occasionally clunky sequences, but Iceage attempting to write songs of unprecedented magnitude this far into their career is admirable. The album’s greatest triumph is its finale, “The Holding Hand,” which plays to their tension-building strengths.

The Danish four-piece tapped Spaceman 3’s Sonic Boom for production on this uncharacteristically uplifting endeavor, and you can see the uneasy alliance of the bright colors of Peter Kember’s recent work mixing into the half melted, slushy desolation of Iceage’s aesthetic.

Those that are used to their favourite tunes packing an immediate punch may be left disappointed, but the time spent ruminating has clearly served them well.