Lately, it kind of feels like everything's coming up country. The newest solo material we've heard from Christopher Owens ditches Girls' surfy and retro-pop sounds for something twangier. Pure X's Heaven, one of my favorite records of the year, has a major classic-country influence. The FADER's Duncan Cooper even started a column, Another Country, to keep tabs on emerging artists in a genre that, until recently, often went unnoticed around here. And while this new Iceage song doesn't exactly sound like Sturgill Simpson, the Danish four-piece is clearly experimenting with elements of the aesthetic, at least within the context of their own soul-scathing, irregularly structured punk music. The video for "The Lord's Favorite," the band's first new song since last year's You're Nothing, sees frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt getting wrecked and sloshing through lyrics about hundred euro wine, believing in heaven, sweat-smeared makeup and five-inch white high heels. Yes, the band members' faces are mostly expressionless and there's an unromantic, vaguely aggressive intensity to both the song and the scene—but booze, God, and tall shoes? It doesn't get much more country than that.
