THE BLESSED FEW - A PAPAL DISPENSATION FOR ICECREAM HANDS part 2
- Bernard Zuel
- 14 minutes ago
- 4 min read
TIME FLIES? Well it doesn’t dawdle Charles Jenkins, erstwhile frontman of a bunch of Melbourne pop bon vivants, sometime teacher, user of cricket metaphors and weekly maker of instant songs for a radio station that can’t believe its luck.
Jenkins, the most active but by no means only songwriter of the bunch in Icecream Hands is surprised to realise that that it has been five years between albums for the band: half a decade since No Weapon But Love, now joined by another slice of guitar rock stuffed with melodies, care and wit, Giant Fox Pineapple Tree.
In the interim there have been various side and solo projects for Jenkins, Douglas Lee Robertson, Derek Smiley, Marcus Goodwin and David Milne – often enough in some combination with bandmates – and imminent are two more gigs on the east coast. But I tell the man there doesn’t appear to be a good reason to make between-album-waits this long or any longer.
“I know,” he drawls. “Can you imagine the economic downturn that the country would endure?”
Okay, sure, but consider the enjoyment downturn, what modern economists are now recognising in national wellbeing as something beyond GDP or CPI, to a measure like the GNHI, the Gross National Happiness Index (it’s real: look it up!). And if the economists are saying it, it must be important, so think of your people Charles!
In this economic spirit since we are discussing overarching matters – and, as he confessed in part one of this interview, there is “still just immense joy in the writing … and mostly in the making” of albums like Giant Fox Pineapple Tree more than 30 since the first Icecream Hands record – is it possible to discern a mission statement for the band?
“We do a particular thing quite well, and I think it’s that upbeat guitar pop, harmony-laden, exuberant thing,” Jenkins says. “Though if we had a whole record of full of them then you get a bit bored by them. As you can imagine, everyone in the band has various other genres that they enjoy: Marcus is a big prog rock fan; Doug likes The Carpenters – they are a genre unto themselves [chuckling] and deservedly so – I might be more ‘60s influenced.
“And when we get together, I kinda feel like it’s just 1975 or something [he almost smirks now] and punk is just around the corner … “
Having sidetracked and amused himself, Jenkins returns to that original answer. “No, we know that there is this thing that we all enjoy, collectively. We don’t have any arguments about that. The other thing is I tend to submit so many songs that is kind of easy for them to decide which suits.”
One of the ways they play with this expectation of style and tone though is to impose restrictions on themselves: sometimes it’s musical or philosophical, sometimes it’s financial or practical. But most often it is the truth belying that “upbeat guitar pop, harmony-laden, exuberant thing”, evident all over the current album: Icecream Hands can run an undercurrent of something that exists at least in the reflective shadow of melancholy.
“There are a number of songs on this album that started out because I spent some time in hospital having the removal of a third nipple … no, the removal of a non-essential organ,” Jenkins explains. “I was up there for a week, up on the seventh floor of St Vincent’s, and when I got out I kept on writing, pretty keen on Gallbladder: The Musical and one song [about a man in a neighbouring bed who was sure he was high above it all] kinda became Tambourine Mountain.
“And there was this young guy, big guy, next to me who was going through withdrawal from alcohol – everyone up there Bernard was there because of alcohol or cigarettes – and going into shock, and that in a roundabout way led to Carry On. That might explain some of the underlying melancholy to it all.”
If Andrew Lloyd Webber is breathing a sigh of relief that Gallbladder: The Musical – which Jenkins talked about in an earlier interview, see below - won’t be there to show him up, he should think again.
“I am trying to write a musical about Pope Joan,” says Jenkins of the legend – most recently explored in Emily Maguire’s wonderful novel, Rapture – that a deeply religious woman in the Middle Ages disguised herself as a monk and eventually became pope. “But that’s a story for another day.”
But wait. There’s more. A lot more. Like maybe triple album more.
“The good thing about all this musical talk is it just helps you to focus this stuff, and then if it doesn’t make it to the stage – because that would be a nightmare trying to get that together: too many people – then at least I’ve got a concept album, or a rock opera!”
A rock opera. A woman pope. More Icecream Hands songs than you know what to do with. Why not? It’s what God would want, surely.
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Icecream Hands play:
Petersham Bowling Club, December 13
Northcote Social Club, December 20
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