Despite having released five studio albums and an outtakes collection with his main band (Iceage), two albums with his main ‘side-project’ Marching Church, and a handful of EPs and collaborative albums since he first emerged from Copenhagen as a fresh-faced 18-year-old back in 2011, Rønnenfelt has seemingly found the energy to get around to releasing his debut solo album, Heavy Glory.
The biggest surprise of the whole thing is that Rønnenfelt appears, at least for most of the album, to be a changed man: he sounds clear, sincere, and even optimistic despite making a career out of being densely literary, theatrical and even gleefully nihilistic.
The sincerity begins on gorgeous opener “Like Lovers Do”, which showcases his rich, restrained voice against the backdrop of some insistently strummed acoustic guitar.
“Another Round” is slower and steadier but no less pretty. A gentle drum machine rhythm (sounds more like a metronome than anything else!) underpins an ecstatic, wonderful song - it could quite easily have been pulled from Primal Scream’s catalogue (from Demodelica, perhaps?)
Rønnenfelt spends the next couple of tracks, “Doomsday Childsplay” and “Close”, in similarly rich musical territory, accompanied by beautiful vocal accompaniments and violins and sweeping rhythms.
There are moments where Rønnenfelt adds some grit and grease to proceedings. Firstly, “Worm Grew A Spine”, which is built on a crappy drum machine shuffle, and secondly on the Spacemen 3 cover “Sound of Confusion”, which reverse-engineers the Velvet Underground roots of the original and brings them right to the fore. Curiously, it’s a cover of a Spacemen 3 demo that would go on to become one of their most well-known songs (“Walkin’ with Jesus”), but the way it’s played makes it fall directly between the heavier demo and the lighter final piece.
Another cover, of Townes Van Zandt’s “No Place to Fall”, is amongst the finest things Rønnenfelt has ever recorded. It’s the simplest, cleanest song on the record and probably the best. It fits Elias like a glove, and its poetic desolation achieves the kind of effect he’s been chipping away at for the last decade.
This is a relatively direct album, and it gives you all you need to know about it within the first ten minutes, but its reliance on a consistent sonic palette only increases its power. Of course, Rønnenfelt is the star of the show – his name is on the marquee this time – but the songs are a very, very close second.
