Way, Little Iva

Rip It Up, Issue 222, 1 February 1996, Page 8

Way, Little Iva

Shocking news In pop music circles can come in many forms — Robbie leaving Take That, Louise waving goodbye to Eternal, and the continued lack of solo material from Andrew Ridgeley.

The revelation this month is that Iva Davies and Icehouse are alive and kicking, and still in show business. Their new album The Berlin Tapes is a 13-song collection of covers. The original artists include Bowie, Sinatra, PIL, and Lou Reed. During the making of the record, Davies suggested to long time friend and Sydney Dance Company choreographer Graeme Murphy that a ballet could be constructed around the songs. The resulting production, Berlin, was toured successfully in Australia, and was recently staged at the Aotea Centre. For Davies, the creation of the ballet also meant he could intentionally get a bit vague about describing the album.

“One reason I wanted to attach this album to a dance work was so could describe it as an adjunct to a stage work. I prefer not to refer to it as a covers album, because I’ve always had incredible problems with covers albums — generally, I hate them. But obviously, in its form here, it looks exactly like a covers album — in fact, it is.” Davies has no plans to record any original Icehouse compositions until 1997, but the man who penned a string of hits in the early 80s, including ‘Hey, Little Girl’, ‘No Promises’ and ‘Crazy’, keeps a keen eye on the pop music landscape of today.

“I tend to have an overall view that music is a cyclic thing, and also I guess my view of music is constrained by having a certain

knowledge of the history of music going back hundreds of years. I don’t think anything’s changed much — there are periods when music is more disposable, and there are periods where it is more intense. For example, dance music these days is practically in the same category as disco was regarded when it was happening. That is, it is music generated entirely for the purpose of dance — which is totally valid — but perhaps it doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny beyond that. But then we’re likely to go through some incredibly intense period of art making. But none of this is new, nothing’s really changed, nothing is original.”

JOHN RUSSELL