Subbacultcha - Elias Rønnenfelt: Heavy Glory
We are finally back at OT301 with Elias Rønnenfelt, whom you may know from renowned band Iceage. Elias will present his flawless LP Heavy Glory. Sentimental folk reminding us of the Subba indie days. A promising record–the kind that makes you want to cry as well as put on your dancing shoes.
Heavy Glory is the first solo record by Elias Rønnenfelt, who for the past 16 years has been the singer of Iceage, a band he co-founded when he was 16 years old. Heavy Glory is the sound of growing up by throwing oneself into the world, made by someone whose only constant companions have been a pen and a guitar. The album tells tales of inspiration and perseverance in the face of chaos, isolation and excess. Villains are poetic, crocodiles and rats without names or shapes, while banal details evoke a sharp, lived ennui, from the perfume of a urinal to the mere fact of Luton, London’s loneliest airport. The world it describes is a bright mess, and Rønnenfelt is in it. He knows how to be in it.
Heavy Glory was recorded in Copenhagen, in chapters and moments, over the course of a year. Rønnenfelt plays the guitars. Iceage’s Dan Kjær Nielsen plays drums. Forever collaborators including Iceage and Danish ’77 punk godfather Peter Peterdrop drop in, and two songs feature distinctive vocal counterpoints from Joanne Robertson and Fauzia. “I’ve done this a bunch of times,” Rønnenfelt explains, speaking of the process of crafting a long player, “but capturing and crystallizing an album remains a singular ritual, just with different circumstances. We are capturing something that is hard to hold down.”
The songwriting of this record first took shape in the spring of 2022, during the curious coda of the pandemic, when the world felt neither open nor closed. Rønnenfelt, “sick and tired of not being able to do what I do,” announced to his fans and friends that he would play shows anywhere in Europe, in any venue, to whoever wanted to hear his music. On the road, Rønnenfelt would write songs and play them the next day. These songs, which form the heart of this LP, were designed to be played anywhere, and they had to be: they were christened in forests and living rooms, bookstores and chapels.
Heavy Glory is a record that examines all the things that lovers do, from the most desperate to the most pure. The album’s crooked path is threaded through by a lover. Maybe more than one lover, the timeline shifts constantly—she’s spectral and ever-changing, like the women of Mickey Newbury’s Looks Like Rain or Townes Van Zandt’s Our Mother the Mountain. The lover haunts the record, reappearing and provoking Rønnenfelt, pulling him in and pushing him away.
Tickets:
Presale €15
Door €17
Free for members