Monday 5 July 2010

Electro Classic Jukebox: Icehouse.

Even though I just finished working on this Icehouse essay on their debut album Flowers, it unfortunately got back-logged to the month of May, so some new readers might not get a chance to read it. However, there's always room for more Icehouse, so I'd like to share with you one of my favorite tracks of theirs.

Originally released in 1982 on the album Primitive Man, "Great Southern Land" was subsequently re-released in the United States in 1989 on the compilation album also known as Great Southern Land. It is also, to this day, the single most popular song from Icehouse's oeuvre. It was also featured in a really really really terrible Yahoo Serious film called Young Einstein. Have you seen this "film"? I truly and deeply love and respect Australia and its citizens (in fact, I've plans on moving there later this year), but seriously (haha) - their export of Yahoo Serious should be investigated by Interpol as one of the more atrocious international crimes ever committed. He is that unfunny.

But I digress. The song in question is quite good - filled to the brim with chunky guitar riffs, hypnotic drumming, spacey sound-effects, and a beautiful, soaring synth that nicely dove-tails the whole thing, coloring everything the shade of an Australian sunset (which are quite beautiful). Iva Davies' falsetto voice finishes things off nicely as he sings of his lovely island home and of how it's been ravaged over and over again ever since it was a "prison island."
Great Southern Land, Great Southern Land
You walk alone, like a primitive man
You walk alone with the ghosts of time
And they burned you black,
Yeah, they burned you black.
Anyway, with no further ado, here is Icehouse and the gorgeous desert-set video for "Great Southern Land." Just like with INXS' "Kiss The Dirt," there are fires in the desert at night! Sounds like a great party. Enjoy, my friends. And check out that awesome goanna!

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