Iceage's Elias Rønnenfelt: Kill Your Darlings

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Elias Rønnenfelt appeared as the "musical guest" alongside Paul Hameline and Vic Carmen Sonne on Casper Sejersen's surreal, imaginary talk show, The Paul Hameline Afterparty Morning Show, featured in 032c Issue #47 Summer 2025.

Rønnenfelt is the frontman of Iceage —a group Iggy Pop once described as “the only current punk band that sounds really dangerous." Since forming the group with friends in 2008 and earning acclaim for his poignant lyricism, Rønnenfelt has been embraced by the art world and launched several solo ventures.

Earlier this year, he released the solo album Heavy Glory, as well as lucre, a col-
laborative record with fellow underground luminary Dean Blunt. Yesterday, he announced the release of his second album, Speak Daggars (coming this October).

The Paul Hameline Afterparty Morning Show editorial also included a non-imaginary interview with Rønnenfelt about his family's past and his musical future.

The full editorial is part of 032c Issue #47—Summer 2025. Buy a copy HERE.

Cassidy George: Casper Sejersen photographed you for this issue. What was that experience like?

Elias Rønnenfelt: It wasn’t a traditional shoot. Casper created this fake, surrealist talk show where I was supposed to be one of the guests. Paul [Hameline] was the host, and the actress Vic Carmen [Sonne] was also meant to be ... whatever she is! They’ve both been friends of mine for over a decade. I used to stay at Paul’s parents’ apartment in Paris during a period of my life when I was kind of just floating around. I was basically a squatter! Vic has also always been very dear to me, so it was a fun opportunity to catch up and act this out with them in a somewhat official setting.

CG: You’ve done a lot of great interviews lately, especially with smaller platforms and channels. It feels like fewer musicians these days are willing to have conversations about their work. Has supporting independent music journalism always been important to you?

ER: It’s kind of funny to hear that, because I started out with a reputation of being a journalist’s worst nightmare. I had a very antagonistic view of music journalists – and that’s pretty well documented [laughs]. I was thrown into the press circuit when I was just 18, suddenly dealing with journalists of varying quality who were all like 30 years old, which felt ancient to me at the time. You’ve got all these old people constantly asking you to define what you do – and I hadn’t reached any kind of definition yet, so it felt a bit intrusive. A lot of those interviews ended prematurely. There was a lot of hanging up and general dissatisfaction on all sides.

But once you’ve been doing this for over a decade, you get a much better understanding of what you’re doing and why. You’re more qualified to talk about it. And if you’re speaking with someone who’s good at what they do, the conversation can actually help you understand yourself. It forces you to reflect on what the fuck it is that you just did.

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CG: You translated your book of poetry, Sunken Heights (2023), from Danish into English. Was that an arduous process?

ER: I went into it thinking it was going to be a walk in the park. Writing it wasn’t hard – it was like vomiting up whatever needed to come out. It was spillage. This was the first time I really tried my hand at pure writing, without the framework of a song. There was nothing to dictate the form. Editing was a painstaking ordeal – and then came the translation. I figured I’d just dump the whole thing into Google Translate and revise a bit. It became immediately clear that poetry doesn’t work that way. You can’t do direct translation from Danish to English.

I had to spend time with every single line, which ended up being a gift. I was forced to scrutinize every word. Everything had to fight for its right to be there. I threw a lot away. It was a big exercise in killing my darlings. Coming from a musical background, I think I was trying to prove to myself that I could write. That led to some of it being overly elaborate. I’ve always had a proclivity for voluptuous language – but this was voluptuous to the point of extremity.

Making music is more active. You sit with an idea, take it to the rehearsal space, and live it out in between. It becomes quickly apparent what works and what doesn’t. Trying things out is the editing process. In the end, it’s all just intuition.

CG: A few months ago, Julian Casablancas told me it only takes him five minutes to write a song – and that he probably has 5,000 of them on his iPhone. The hard part is deciding what to focus on.

ER: I can relate. There’s this strange kind of natural selection that happens. The thing you end up working on is the one that propels you to work on it – the one that keeps coming back. But yeah, a lot of things die a slow, lonely death in the memo section of your phone.

CG: Your poetry book also features artwork by the painter Elizabeth Peyton. Did you two already have a relationship?

ER: Elizabeth started painting me over ten years ago. Since then, we’ve developed a really great friendship. She’s someone who really understands me – and understands art, and what goes into making it. We’ve always been able to confide in each other in that way. I remember once meeting her for coffee and she gave me this beautiful notebook with my initials on it, custom marbled. Usually, my notebooks are small enough to fit in my pocket, but this one was larger – and it felt like it wanted a different kind of writing. I knew it wouldn’t be for songs. That’s the notebook I started the book in.

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CG: I recently saw an Instagram Reel where you mentioned your grandfather worked with the Resistance during World War II.

ER: Yeah! We were playing Pitchfork Festival in Chicago and they asked me to do a promo video where I talked about an object that was meaningful to me. I was wearing my great-grandfather’s wedding ring at the time – my mom had given it to me. Back in the 1940s, he was running a café in Copenhagen. During the Nazi occupation, a lot of German soldiers would go there. They’d get drunk and speak freely, assuming he didn’t understand German – but he was a military man and spoke it perfectly. He’d listen to their plans and report them to the Resistance.

He also sent my grandfather – who was just a kid – to break into their tanks and steal equipment, which they stashed in their attic. Eventually someone ratted him out. I believe they were going to be sent to an encampment, but they managed to escape and go into hiding in southern Denmark. That’s where my grandfather met my grandmother. The rest is history. And I wasn’t even told this story until I was in my 20s!

CG: Wow. And what about your parents? Did your love of music and literature come from them, or was it something you discovered on your own?

ER: My dad was really into movies. He showed me great films at a very young age – stuff that was definitely not age-appropriate, like Taxi Driver (1976). The music playing in our house in the early 2000s didn’t influence me at all. It was Spice Girls, Dido, Lou Bega. But when I was 10 or 11, I got really into rap – like Method Man. I grew up in a neighborhood in Copenhagen where a lot of activism was happening. There were massive riots. Every time I walked out the door, there was this subversive world waiting to be discovered.

I also had a bit of a crate-digger mentality. Once I got interested in music, I realized there was this whole infinite world to explore. Me and Dan [Kjær Nielsen] – who would become Iceage’s drummer – were hungry to discover it all. We went to libraries and record shops. We used websites like Soulseek and did a lot of pirate downloading. Whenever we found something we loved, we’d try to find an interview or any information we could. We were following this giant spiderweb of music. All the guys in Iceage had that mentality from the time we were about 11. We were discovering things simultaneously – and when we weren’t hanging out IRL, the MSN Messenger chats were popping off.

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