Eskimo Ice House

Icehouse rebuilt

If Iva Davies was ever in any doubt as to the power of the first Icehouse album, he need look no further than Eskimo Joe, Cut Copy and Jet all name-checking it as being influential.

"Eskimo Joe have been performing a cover of We Can Get Together (at their concerts) and Cut Copy have gone out of their way to talk about the album," says Icehouse's singer, songwriter and guitarist.

Released in 1980, when Icehouse were still called Flowers, the album was called Icehouse and featured the songs We Can Get Together, Can't Help Myself and later Love in Motion, which in the intervening years have burned themselves into the lexicon of Aussie rock.

Now in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the band's name change, Flowers' Icehouse album has been remastered and re-released. The three-disc set comprises the remastered album with three bonus tracks, 19 tracks recorded live for radio in 1980-81 and a DVD of Flowers' appearance at New Zealand's Sweetwaters Music Festival in 1981.

And, for the first time, the band's music is now available via download.

Davies says he's extremely happy with the remastering of the album - done by veteran studio whiz and Flowers fan Steve Smart - because he never really felt the original was engineered quite as it should have been. He blames himself for taking the reigns of something he didn't really know how to do.

"I remember hearing Billy Jean and it was probably the loudest thing I had ever heard on radio," says the singer, who has always had a fascination with production and music technology. "The quality of our mix sounded fine on your home stereo but didn't translate well to radio. That was because I was in my 20s and a little knowledge was a dangerous thing."

The singer says one of the reasons for the success of the album at the time was that the band had spent three years gigging before they even went near a studio.

"We had a large following around Australia and we were the highest-paid unsigned act in the country. We had a ready-made audience for the album. There were 10,000 people waiting to buy it. It remained the highest-selling debut from an Australian band for 20 years."

Along with bass player Keith Welsh, Davies has spent much of the last year going back through the Icehouse archives - listening to old tapes, watching old footage - to find material to include in the re-released package.

"All of this is really exciting," he says. "I remember the magic of listening to Pink Floyd when I was 18 and 20 and know how influential that was to me. It's remarkable to know that I'm a part of that kind of significance to other people because of this album. It's mind-boggling.

Icehouse To Headline Ute Muster - Undercover.fm News

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