Song(s) of the Day # 1,571 Iceage

'Cos we can't stop killing and we'll never stop killing and we shouldn't stop killing, hurrah..'

It's very rare that I've undergone the transformative experience while listening to a record from start to finish that I experienced yesterday with Danish band Iceage's fourth album Beyondless. Starting off wary and suspicious and ending up pretty impressed and vaguely convinced. And the reason for the need for the transformation can probably summed up in one word - mannered. I've never been a great fan of the mannered or mannerisms in Rock and Roll music. And it's undoubtable that Iceage's singer and leader Elias Bender Ronnenfelt is one of the most mannered frontmen you're ever likely to come upon. This hits you within the first few moments of when he opens his mouth and sings. Or perhaps 'drawls' is a more accurate description.

So if Ronnenfelt is indisputably mannered, by the end of the album he's made a good claim to rightfully go at the back of a long queue of mannered Punk frontmen stretching back fifty years. Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, Stiv Bators, Chris Bailey, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Nick Cave seem to be his immediate godfathers and lineage. And it's thinking of him within this generally and often highly noble tradition that Iceage suddenly started to make sense to me. Musically they're somewhere between The Stooges Fun House and The Saints fabulous early records. Add Birthday Party, Bad Seeds, Gallon Drunk, Crime & the City Solution and Gun Club to the mix and you'll have some idea of what's happening here. And though taking such seminal artists and records as a touchstone can often be a recipe for disaster, (see many of Primal Scream's records over the years), Iceage make a highly creditable job of things given their vaulting ambition for the most part.

Beyondless is a highly theatrical record. And a highly intoxicated and literate one, (taking its name from the 1983 Samuel Beckett novella Worstward Ho, now there's artistic credentials - or pretensions if you prefer). If Ronnenfelt is rarely my favourite part of the record, he's often as close to Craig Nicholls and Pete Doherty as he is to Iggy and Cave and generally more so, I can understand why Iggy himself, in addition to Richard Hell, (who has written a glowing testimonial essay to the band), and Total Control's Daniel Stewart, (who has written another), are so much in the band's thrall.

Really with these things, it's best to wait before making a definitive judgement. I've only spent a day with Iceage, never mind Ronnenfelt and Beyondless. If they've got staying power they'll make it to my end of the year list. In the meantime they certainly more than merit a Song(s) of the Day. Now if only we can persuade that nice young man to stop rolling about the stage, comb and wash his hair and not smoking so copiously every time a camera is pointed at him Iceage may yet defy all the cliches and be a force to be reckoned with!