Elias Rønnenfelt reconnects with his longtime band and carries them to a level of incandescent intensity never before reached.
The angelic face and the eternal IT-boy aura of Elias Rønnenfelt (only 34 years old on the clock) cannot obscure the fact that the group he fronts is beginning to take on some veteran seasoning, having formed back in 2008. Far, very far from the cold-blooded post-punk that had propelled the band beyond Danish borders in 2013 (You’re Nothing), the Copenhagen crew’s sixth album reaches a form of creative plenitude that is as intoxicating as it is joyous.
Surely, by dabbling in solo escapades (the excellent and chaotic 2025) or flirting with the free-spirited Yung Lean, Vegyn and Dean Blunt (for the expansive Lucre, an EP released on New Year’s Day 2025), Elias Rønnenfelt has, along the way, acquired a formidable art of unself-consciousness. But, whatever the cause, For Love of Grace & the Hereafter is the coolest and most fiercely playful record of the Danish outfit.
If the country and Americana forays have long punctuated his discography for nearly a decade, this new release pushes that deconstructive approach to rock even further. The mutable character of the songwriting by Elias, Dan, Johan and Jakob propels them toward the original rockabilly and Johnny Cash’s outlaw country, producing Smiths-like detours (1835) nipped in the bud, and seizing the punk-rock impulse and weaving it with reggae (Rønnenfelt is a big fan of the genre), as seen through the prism of The Clash.
Behind this ambitious project of reconfiguring their music, the comparison to Joe Strummer is not unfounded. Abandoning for the first time the seriousness of his sharply wounded singing, Elias Rønnenfelt has never seemed so free in his performance. Slouched, melodramatic, nonchalant or giggling, this playful relationship with the microphone is constitutive of what unfolds on For Love of Grace & the Hereafter. A record powered by incandescent, recreational and overflowing energy that one would not have dared imagine from Iceage’s glacier.
For Love of Grace & the Hereafter (Mexican Summer/Virgin Records/Universal). Release on May 29.
