Album Review: Iceage - Plowing Into The Field Of Love Tom

Who would have ever thunk it? The gloriously depressive Danish punk rock wunderkinds in Iceage – who released an album called You’re Nothing – would come back around with album number three sounding like a reverent homage to the life and times of Nick Cave. Yes, Plowing Into The Field Of Love is slower, darker and more layered than anything the band has done before, and drips of the Nick Cave influence, but at least Iceage had the good taste to stop short of growing giant spider mullets and having one member wearing a cowboy/pirate/ladies hat for the promo pics.

However, where their debut LP New Brigade was a compelling effort of concise indie-punk and follow-up You’re Nothing was proof that they could actually play instruments, Plowing Into The Field Of Love loses the band’s sense of stylistic surety. Like all people who venture into Cave’s oeuvre 20-odd years too late (which is probably you if you’re currently picking up/writing for the street press), there’s very little discernment between the shades of our national treasure’s work. There are notes of The Birthday Party’s dirgey swamp-rock on Forever – frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt even does a pretty good fucked-up junkie baritone – and plenty of the Murder Ballads-esque fascination with Americana on The Lord’s Favorite (biblical references… classic Nick).

While those shifts are fine over the span of a career, when there’s only five songs between them on an album the stylistic disparity can be jarring. And while Iceage’s continued growth is admirable, sometimes Plowing Into The Field Of Love missteps.