Cold Calling

"We've been quite busy. Yes, that's true,” Iceage guitarist Johan Surballe Wieth says of the run of activity that followed the band's 2011 break-out debut long player New Brigade. The guitarist speaks slowly and without enthusiasm as he says this, it feels as though he's converting Danish into English as you talk with him. But in spite of this, Johan's dire tone and tendency towards understatement doesn't really feel like a language barrier-thing. This is, after all, one quarter of the band that should have been flying high after getting their debut album released around the world to a great deal of critical acclaim but instead wrote a record like You're Nothing.

As teenagers Johan, vocalist/guitarist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, drummer Dan Kjær Nielsen and bassist Jakob Tvilling Pless experienced the penultimate dream of most people who have ever picked up a guitar – they got to tour the world and play full-time in a band. But the experience wasn't all that great for the four, as Johan explains, “it's very hard to live that way. Not having some kind of thing to grasp onto that seems familiar. But then sometimes that is very nice,” and when it came time to sit down and write You're Nothing, it seemed like living the dream hadn't blunted the sense of frustration that pulsed through New Brigade.

“When we did …Brigade we were very excited that we had just made a record. At the time that was just the biggest thing we wanted to do. So we had no expectation of what was to happen or the sudden excitement and interest. That was strange in a way. It was a test of our friendship, and I think we passed with an A+. Definitely. And of course, the traveling that we have done, in such an excessive amount, did things that were very good, and in some ways very bad.”

The sounds of trouble in paradise are heard all over You're Nothing. From frontman Rønnenfelt's repeated scream of “Pressure!” in disco-leaning opener Ecstasy and the gnashing guitar tones on It Might Hit First, the album pulses with the band's uneasiness and scorn, perhaps even more so than New Brigade.

“We did this record over a very long period of time,” Johan reluctantly offers on Iceage's development between the two records. “We did some of the songs just days after we finished doing the first album, and then we did some of the songs just days before entering the recording studio. It's been a very long time, but those songs we wrote just after the first record have changed, there's been some back and forth, that's shifted what they ended up sounding like… I think in a quite natural direction. Well, I think it's natural in just the way that it happened. And this time when we were recording we knew we were so much better musicians than we were the last time. Time passes and we had played on the good side of 300 shows together, we got to know each other better as musicians and that helped to shape the second recording. Plus when we were recording we were definitely more aware of how to do what we wanted to do. We had better tools for shaping what we had in mind than the first time.

“New Brigade represented our creative vision perfectly at the time when we made it. Because it shows what we could do and what we couldn't do and how we took what we wanted to do and turned it into a record. And I think the same thing happened with this, and now because we're in another place the two records represent very well where we were at the time. But that changes quickly I guess.”

The changes between the two records run both deep and superficial. At their core, numbers like the title track and Burning Hand from You're Nothing represent the stratospheric development of Iceage as songwriters, they capture a dynamism and understanding of melody while retaining the confrontational nature of the harsh, atonal tracks on New Brigade. Yet espite the development of Iceage as songwriters, most people would rather talk about the fact that a track from the new album features the band playing (gasp) piano.

“I think that discussion is ridiculous,” Johan says, “and I think that people put too much into things like that. It's dangerous in a way, like we've been put in a box and somehow people have an idea so that when we put piano on a song it surprises people this much. It feels somewhat ridiculous. So I think because of this we don't really pay attention to anything that's said about our band. It does not influence the way we write stuff.

“I think in a way, with time, we lost some invisible boundaries about what one can do and one can't do. So there was no need to argue about whether there should be piano on Morals or not, because that just seemed like the only thing to do.”

The guitarist is adamant that losing those invisible boundaries was an effort that Iceage undertook very organically. In fact, they weren't at all inspired by any other bands they saw on their massive world tour in support of New Briagde.

“I don't think something new that we hadn't thought about came of seeing all the other bands play. We saw a lot of good bands and some poor ones in between. But it wasn't an eye-opener either way where we got turned onto anything new. I don't think we learned anything and if we did we were in no way conscious of it”

Cynics have commented that some of the more musically adventurous, mature, nuances of You're Nothing are symptomatic of Iceage signing on to American powerhouse indie label Matador. Even if such a reductive criticism didn't overlook the caustic ethos at the heart of their second record, Johan's response to the question, 'Were you stoked to sign on to Matador?' certainly dispels any notion of a band seeking commercial success.

“Ummm… Not really,” the guitarist ponders. “I guess it was kind of a weird decision because we had been approached by some bigger record labels and I think we were kind of confused whether to even put it out on a bigger label, we were not aware of what we wanted to do. And then we went another direction and that didn't work out and I guess Matador seemed to see us for what we are and not some potential, that we weren't a diamond in the rough but something that's finished, and yeah… We can't really say if it was a good idea because the record's only just come out. I've never really knew any of the music they put out, I don't know anything about the label, I don't think we feel as part of some Matador family.”

You're Nothing is available now.