Icecream Hands- John Curtin Hotel

After missing last year's 15th anniversary performance of their fantastic album Sweeter Than The Radio, I was really happy when Icecream Hands announced they were playing a one off show at the John Curtin Hotel doing highlights from all five of their albums. Danny, Ruth and I started our evening downstairs having dinner at Bluebonnet Barbecue (look out for a review on Eagle vs Roo shortly) before heading upstairs to the bandroom where we caught the last song by opening act Luke Sinclair of Raised By Eagles.

For tonight's special show Charles Jenkins, Douglas Lee Robertson and Derek G Smiley were joined by the talented Davey Lane (You Am I) on lead guitar. They started their set with "The Obvious Boy" (which includes a shout out to California). Despite not having listened to these Icecream Hands albums for a while I was impressed that I managed to remember most of the lyrics to the songs they played. Highlights for me during their hour and a half set included "Come Along," "Why'd You Have To Leave Me This Way?," "Spiritlevel Windowsill," "Nipple" and "Yellow & Blue." It was so great to hear those jangly guitars and harmonies live again. We even got a couple of covers in the encore with Davey leading a version of The Beatles "A Hard Day's Night" and a fantastic cover of David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging." I am hopeful that we will get treated to more of these one off shows in the future.

Icecream Hands Reunion

Last night Ruth, Danny and I headed to Northcote for the evening.  We started with dinner at Otsumami on High Street, which is sort of like a Japanese tapas place.  We shared a few dishes and it was very good.  After a wander around High Street we had dessert at Delphi Continental Cakes and then headed to a bar where one of Ruth's friends was having an engagement party (and we got to watch the second half of the Australian Open women's final). 

The next stop was the Northcote Social Club where Icecream Hands were reuniting for one night to play their entire 1999 album Sweeter Than The Radio from start to finish.  This is probably my favorite album of theirs, and it was especially fantastic to hear "Spiritlevel Windowsill," "Dodgy," "Yellow & Blue," and "Giving It All Away."  There was a big crowd sing-along for their hit single "Nipple."  You would never know that they haven't played together in a few years as they sounded great.  The encore consisted of two covers and then it was all over.  Hopefully we will be lucky enough to get some more shows like this in the future.

Here's a clip of Icecream Hands on Hey Hey, It's Saturday back in the day playing "Spiritlevel Windowsill"

Icecream Hands

Last night Ruth, Danny and I headed over to The East Brunswick Club to see Icecream Hands play. We are all big fans of the band, and it was so great to finally see them live. To me Icecream Hands are the epitome of the Melbourne sound- melodic guitars, harmonizing vocals and fantastic pop songs. They played selections from all of their albums, including the new one "The Good China." Each member of the band writes songs and sings lead so it was nice to be able to put a face to the vocals of these songs I have loved over the years. I often had their CDs in my car's CD changer so I associate a lot of the songs with my drives to and from work when I lived in the States. The band played for an hour and a half and I was able to pick up their new limited edition EP for "Come Home" at the merchandise table after the show.

The opening acts were indie rock band The Wellingtons and Abby Dobson, who used to be in the Australian band Leonardo's Bride. Both were good, and I especially liked Abby's semi-acoustic set. She reminded me a bit of Lisa Germano with her atmospheric and slightly depressing songs.