More about: Iceage

I haven’t been to many weddings, but when I picture a stereotypical matrimonial scene things often round off in the same way: a male relative of the bride clambers onto a decadent stage, dressed in a too-small vintage suit and, swaying, having dragged himself away from the free bar for just long enough to lovingly butcher one of her favourite songs. 

That’s very much how Iceage’s Saturday evening set at the inaugural London installment of Pitchfork Festival felt. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, and actually quite endearing, but more wobbly late-night karaoke than polished four-out-of-five star studio recording. 

Kicking off proceedings earlier in the evening, Wimbledon College of Art-via-continental Europe quartet The Umlauts dragged a meagre looking 7pm crowd to their feet with an electric offering of synthy no-wave punk. Jangling and danceable at times and spiky and obscure at others, the foursome traversed country and culture with their auspicious alloy of multilingual lyricism, antagonistic drum beats and swirling, stylised electronic riffs.

Slowing down the pace a tad, the second slot of the night offered up venue-filling atmospherics from London-based post-rock foursome deathcrash. Alternating between lackadaisical, trancelike tunes and moodier expanses of heavier, slightly more scathing sounds, the morose four-piece meandered through a masterful half-hour of discordant, lo-fi vocals and despondent, overcast beats. 

With MOTH Club’s now rafters suitably packed, Iceage ploughed their way into the main event with a brooding rendition of 2014 release ‘Forever’. Agitated and offbeat, the skulky opener was one of the only bits of older material the band seemed prepared to share, as the rest of the evening saw the five-piece zealously stagger through a confident blend of tracks taken almost entirely from their discursive 2021 record Seek Shelter and its slightly artier younger sibling, 2018’s Beyondless. 

The raucous and careering ‘White Rune’ is the only glimpse we get of pre-2014 Iceage, with the track plucked from their 2011 debut New Brigade yet refreshed with the same gallivanting deviance that permeates the rest of the night’s set. Whilst it might have been nice to see a couple more earlier cuts from the band — especially given this is the Copenhagen-natives’ first show on UK turf in just over two years — as the night progresses it isn’t difficult to see why they’ve stuck to playing their way through their two most recent, and most experimental, releases.

The grooving bassline behind ‘High & Hurt’’s agitated, reverb-laden chorus lends itself to a little bit of movement from amongst the audience, before the hypnotic percussion that underpins ‘Vendetta’ incites a bit more shoulder-swaying and foot-tapping than a post-punk crowd are probably used to. Likewise ‘Dear Saint Cecilia’— a Seek Shelter stand-out that sees Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s brash vocals contrasted with chipper guitar rhythms and vintage bass jaunts— eggs on an enigmatic mixture of feel-good arm-flailing from the back of the room and salient attempts to crowd-surf up front. 

Rønnenfelt too seems spurred on by the band’s recent shift in sonic direction. Cocooning himself with his mic cable for the more tender moments, like the melodic and ballad-tinged ‘Shelter Song', before launching himself around the stage to the jazz-infused fanfare on ‘Pain Killer’ and gyrating to ‘Hurrah’’s heavy, driving riffs, the fermenting frontman showed progression in personality as well as sound: gone are the days of standing and staring sullenly into the crowd, his swaggering stage presence swapped out for a more theatrical, and more highly-charged affair. 

And where most bands might have stuck around for the applause, the fivesome dipped behind one of MOTH Club’s now sweat-soaked walls before there was time to rouse calls for an encore. As the shuffle of feet and first-cracks of chit-chat began taking the place of the scuzzy riffs, flurry of flashing lights and sprawling rings of reverb that had enveloped the cult Hackney haunt moments prior, the inebriated intensity of the last hour becomes clear.

Dramatic and debaucherous, impassioned and effortless all at once: Iceage’s offering might not have been the most polite or polished live show Pitchfork Festival has ever seen, but it’s definitely up there with one of the most fun.

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More about: Iceage