“It’s always cold outside the Icehouse.”
And “there’s no love inside the Icehouse.”
It’s 1981 and I’m 17, totally immersed
in what they call New Wave music, never
to return, or to return only nostalgically,
to the hard rock of my pre-teen years.
Certainly, I saw the video for the title
track and theme song for this new band
on MTV, and it was close enough to Gary
Numan (dark, sad, synth laden) to stir
my teenage new wave heart. Even that
singer had a Numan-like voice, although
a bit more precise, a little less nerdy.
But the slow, sad groove and melancholy
lyric and melody of “Icehouse” was
obscuring a much more upbeat, uptempo
(dare I say “fun”) set of songs, albeit lyrically
a bit humorless. Listening to it
now, I find nothing embarrassing about
this record. This was a good band and
these are good songs. I can even sing
along to the choruses. They made studio
albums well into the 90’s, but for some
reason, this debut album was the first
and last Icehouse album I bought. And
I don’t remember when, but at some
point over the last fifteen years or so,
browsing the used record bins,
I felt strongly enough about my memories
of it to buy it again, having lost my
original copy in the great vinyl purge
of 1988. I’m glad I returned to it.
It completely holds up as a record
worth having, only a little bit dated
by particular synth sounds and production
choices that were typical of the time.
Dated sounds or not, strong songs are
still strong songs; the quality here
transcends the limitations of the era.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Icehouse, Chrysalis Records, 1981, black vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 