Iceage – “Pull Up” (Abra Cover)
Last year, the foxy and ever-evolving Copenhagen punk band Iceage released Seek Shelter, one of our favorite albums of 2021, as well as the one-off Adult Swim single “High & Hurt.” Today, Iceage have come out with another one-off track, and it’s something that nobody could’ve expected from this band: An atmospheric, affectionate cover of a culty Atlanta R&B jam.
In 2016, Abra, a hugely exciting young Atlanta singer, released her Princess EP. Abra had come up with the anarchic rap crew around the DIY label Awful Records, and she’d come up with a druggy, gothy variant on R&B. The slow, hypnotic party track “Pull Up” was a pretty great example of what she was dong at the time. (Abra went quiet for a few years after Princess, but she came back last year with “Unlock It,” a really good Playboi Carti collab.)
It’s hard to say how Iceage decided to cover “Pull Up,” but that’s what they’ve done. Iceage have turned “Pull Up” into a guttural, piano-heavy rock song, but they’ve kept Abra’s vocal cadences and the song’s tricky drum patterns. It’s fun to hear Elias Bender Rønnenfelt growling about “Pull up to your crib riding shotty, shawty/ Pull up with your bitch, now it’s a party.” Listen to the Iceage cover and the Abra original below.
Iceage’s “Pull Up” cover is out now on Mexican Summer.