Iceage’s “Vendetta” is an intoxicating groove

This year is the 10th anniversary of Iceage‘s debut album New Brigade, an album made by what feels like a very different band. The members of the Danish group were either just out of their teens, or just barely still in them, nihilistic, destructive, intent on making a violent ruckus and in as little time as possible. The first time I saw them, they couldn’t have played for more than 20 minutes and it felt like the stage was on the verge of collapsing beneath them. Yet seven years later, on Beyondless, they embraced the sexy indulgence of ’70s-era Rolling Stones complete with big horn arrangements and a desperate yearning to feel something.

“Vendetta,” the second single from their fifth album Seek Shelter, is yet another shift for the group, whose members are older, now have families, and sound like they’re having as much fun as they ever have. It’s as much Primal Scream as it is Stones, all glam-rock buzz and Hacienda groove, vocalist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt dispensing sleazy back-alley madlibs like “Cutthroat contract jackleg wildflower” in the manner he might declare himself a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. Though it might be full of brandy and ecstasy—or maybe it’s just that this single is all the intoxication any one really needs after all.