Icehouse

Kings Park

Saturday, February 18

Icehouse main man Iva Davies might have shed his luxuriant mullet but, three decades on, the new wave-meets-pop songs of the Sydney band remain the same.

The band born as Flowers in the punk era hadn't played a proper gig in Perth since 1991 - but on Saturday night they took 5500 fans back to the 80s with a 17-song tour de force.

Opening with the chilly synth-driven Icehouse, it wasn't long before Davies and his five band mates were thawing out classics such as We Can Get Together and Crazy - the latter off the ARIA Hall of Famers' huge hit album, Man of Colours.

The David Bowie textures of Hey Little Girl stood up well exactly 30 years since it was released while long-time fans welcomed rarer Icehouse cuts such as the rocking Boulevarde and Walls.

This was not simply the Iva Davies show. Lead guitarist Paul Gildea pulled out too many rock star riffs for a bloke resembling a hip lawyer while multi-instrumentalist Michael Paynter lent his clean falsetto to Man of Colours. The talented Davies played oboe on this one and the fans loved it.

The hits kept coming - you forget how many great radio songs Icehouse pumped out in the 80s. The first single under the Icehouse moniker, Love in Motion, segued into Electric Blue, which was penned with John Oates and prompted much daggy dancing from ladies who probably sang this into a hairbrush when it first graced the airwaves in 1987.

Flowers' debut single, Can't Help Myself, was a revelation, all tense post-punk textures and driving rhythms before Aussie anthem Great Southern Land - beefed up with Davies and Gildea's guitars - brought the main set to an end.

Earlier, younger guns in Megan Washington, Josh Pyke and Clare Bowditch added some homegrown ballast to an impressive bill. Pyke's melodious acoustic pop drew favourable responses while Washington's "mullet set" - business up front, party at the back - was a welcome distraction before the return of Icehouse.

Davies and co. were seriously enjoying themselves by the end, dishing up the excellent 1985 number No Promises before late-80s single Nothing Too Serious captured the mood. The bluesy all-band singalong Baby, You're So Strange was a strange finale but, by this stage, we were too far gone to care.