Icehouse are a rock band from Sydney, formed in 1977 as Flowers. Initially known in Australia for their pub-rock style, the band later achieved mainstream success playing new-wave and synthpop music and attained Top 10 singles chart success locally and in both Europe and the U.S.
The mainstay of both Flowers and Icehouse has been Iva Davies (singer-songwriter, record producer, guitar, bass, keyboards, oboe), supplying additional musicians as required. The name “Icehouse”, adopted in 1981, comes from an old, cold flat Davies lived in and the strange building across the road populated by itinerant people.
Davies and Icehouse extended the use of synthesizers particularly the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 (“Love in Motion”, 1981), Linn drum machine (“Hey Little Girl”, 1982) and Fairlight CMI (Razorback trailer, 1983) in Australian popular music. Their best-known singles on the Australian charts included “Great Southern Land”, “Hey Little Girl”, “Crazy”, “Electric Blue” and “My Obsession”; with Top Three albums being Icehouse (1980, as Flowers), Primitive Man (1982) and Man of Colours (1987).
Icehouse was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame on 16 August 2006. ARIA described Icehouse as “one of the most successful Australian bands of the eighties and nineties… With an uncompromising approach to music production they created songs that ranged from pure pop escapism to edgy, lavish synthesised pieces…” Icehouse has produced eight top-ten albums and twenty top-forty singles in Australia, multiple top-ten hits in Europe and North America and album sales of over 28-times platinum in Australasia alone.