Dorks And Losers

On their MySpace page, Min­neapo­lis, Minnesota-native quin­tet Ice Palace describe their music as “happy hard­core” which is both pecu­liar and fas­ci­nat­ing. Those two words don’t usu­ally go together, but in the band’s case it doesn’t not describe.

The other descrip­tive words they use are “lyri­cal” and “rock” — both plain yet accu­rate. Ice Palace can be for­given for using the gen­eral umbrella genre; how­ever, lyri­cal hit me strangely. They didn’t use poetic, which I imag­ine musi­cians more in the vein of Bob Dylan or Neil Young.

I guess I’ve always asso­ci­ated lyri­cal with lim­er­icks or more amus­ing songs, like in the sassi­ness of Nel­lie McKay or the sar­casm of A Camp. In the end, happy hard­core fits better.

Won­der Sub­tly Crush­ing Us is Ice Palace’s sec­ond full-length LP, and first album on fel­low Min­nesota band Cloud Cult’s eco-friendly Earth­ol­ogy Records. Cloud Cult’s front­man Craig Minowa helped pro­duce the album along­side the five-piece (Adam Sorensen — vocals/guitar, Jacob Grun — guitar/vocals, Amy Hager — keys, vocals, trum­pet, Jacob Mullis — bass, vocals, gui­tar, and Joe Gaskill — drums). Ice Palace self-released their debut Bright Leaf Left in 2007.

Sorensen and Minowa have been friends for over a decade, and Won­der Sub­tly Crush­ing Us rep­re­sents the first real (pseudo) col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two since their work on a sin­gle 4-track 15 years ago.

There isn’t any notice­able Cloud Cult influ­ence on Ice Palace’s sopho­more album, which seems like a mish­mash of vary­ing sounds. The open­ing “Phone­book Pil­low” some­what reveals the valid­ity of the happy hard­core descrip­tion with its overt pos­i­tiv­ity and quasi-ska punk sensibility.

This styling is found on other tracks (“Dev­ils Tower” and “Thoughts/Facts”), but the whole album feels under­whelm­ing when the happy-go-luck affair is jux­ta­posed to more folksy tracks like “Lily” and “Col­i­seum.” Oddly enough, the more inter­est­ing songs are the mood­ier ones. The brood­ing “Just Wait” exudes mys­te­ri­ous­ness sim­i­lar to a throw­back to a spaghetti west­ern, while “Younger In A Year” feels like it could be the anthem track to a Wes Ander­son movie.

Unfor­tu­nately, Won­der Sub­tly Crush­ing Us runs at a short 32-minutes, which makes its incon­sis­ten­cies more appar­ent. Ice Palace could have gone more in either the happy hard­core or the folksy Amer­i­cana direc­tion, but instead treaded down both for a very ‘is that it?’ experience.

[pho­tos via Ice Palace]
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Track list:

1. Phone­book Pil­low
2. Dev­ils Tower
3. Col­i­seum
4. Pirate By Thirty
5. Just Wait
6. Thoughts/Facts
7. Lily
8. Slow Motion Fall
9. Out­side The Gates
10. Younger In A Year

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