Danish punk outfit Iceage have signed to Mexican Summer and shared their first single for the label, “The Holding Hand.” It comes with a Anders Malmberg-directed video, and it follows their 2020 single “Lockdown Blues.”
Iceage’s languorous, beatific rock frequently embodies the pain that arises when things are just out of reach, and “The Holding Hand” is filled with a similar anguish. Throughout the song, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt sings in a near-stupor, as if his emotions are overwhelming to the point of incapacitation, about feeling powerless in a harsh scene of mythological proportions. The over-five-minute track is cloaked in a shadowy echo, slightly unsettling wind chimes and, for added drama, slowly pounding guitars and strings that match the gravitas of this tale.
“The song lives in a slurred world, movements are elastically stretched out and strength is found in weakness while you find it hard to tell the difference between fume and matter,” Rønnenfelt says. “Gently the swaying intensifies, feel it escalate. Reach out for the holding hand, it seems almost within scope now.”
“The band has such an amazing and soulful presence, and my aim was to create a cinematic experience around image reflections that would tie in closely to the narrative and the emotional atmosphere of the track, and let the authenticity that the band radiates feel ever present,” Malmberg says of the video.
Watch the video for “The Holding Hand” below.
