Primitive Man by Icehouse

Primitive Man, the second Icehouse album, came out on Chrysalis on 20 September 1982, though it's really Iva Davies alone in the lab. He started recording in January 1982 more or less as a solo project, co-producing with Keith Forsey, who added percussion while Davies handled the singing, lead guitar, bass and Prophet-5 keyboards and programmed the Linn drum machine.

The rockier sound of the debut gives way to cool synthesizer atmosphere. "Hey Little Girl" is hushed and inward-looking and became their international breakthrough, "Glam" hits heavier, "Mysterious Thing" heads for the dance floor, and "Goodnight Mr. Matthews" finds Davies consciously channeling John Lennon. "Great Southern Land" is the big statement, an attempt to squeeze all of Australia into one song, written with a William S. Burroughs-style cut-up method; the inner sleeve shows cut-up strips of handwritten lyrics. It went to number 3 at home, and Davies then rebuilt Icehouse as a full band to take it on the road.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.