Ice Cream’s eclectic recipe is a treat
Hot pop duo with new album reveals influences from Cher to ZZ Top
Who knew that ZZ Top was the foundation upon which Ice Cream was built?
There are a lot of warring elements rattling around in the beguiling techno-racket raised by the Toronto duo of Carlyn Bezic and Amanda Crist, but perhaps the least obvious is a shared reverence for a monster-hit 1983 album by a certain pack of beardy Texan blues-rockers.
“We have a lot of really disparate touchstones. We both love the album ‘Eliminator’ by ZZ Top,” says Bezic. “It’s an amazing record, and that was actually a huge bonding thing for the beginning of Ice Cream: ‘Eliminator,’ specifically. But we also love singers and pop songs and we love listening to country music for that reason.”
“Cher is big for us,” offers Crist.
“Cher, Mariah, Celine,” affirms Bezic. “But then we both also love Sonic Youth. That’s a formative band for both of us, and a lot of weirder, noisier bands were formative for us in high school.”
That all of these seemingly random musical fancies can make sense together within the context of Ice Cream’s icy, minimalist art-pop — and they really do if you give the pair’s absolutely smashing new LP, “FED UP,” a listen with all of the above in mind — probably has something to do with the fact that Bezic and Crist’s friendship does indeed date back to their school years. As Crist puts it, “Ice Cream is very much Carlyn and Amanda,” usually speaking as one voice through their music but also, to some degree, sharing a brain after all this time.
They’ve known each other since the age of 14 and both attended the arts-friendly Earl Haig Secondary School in North York — along with Max (Slim Twig) Turnbull and Simone TB, their future bandmates in Darlene Shrugg, the on-again/off-again Toronto indie “supergroup” with Meg Remy of U.S. Girls in which Bezic and Crist also sometimes play — although it wasn’t until 2014 that they actually decided to try making music together, basically using whatever random gear they had lying around. Ice Cream’s highly original blend of subversively hooky pop, caustic industrial noise, Paisley Park grooviness and general guitar shreddery kind of emerged naturally from there.
“We’d both been playing in other bands and hadn’t had our own projects in awhile,” recalls
Bezic. “And I was living with Amanda’s boyfriend at the time, so we were seeing a lot of each other and there were a lot of nights spent listening to records and just hanging out.”
“I had the Moog, we had a little drum machine and a bass. I think that’s what we started with,” says Crist. “And we just started jamming.”
“I do remember us having a conversation where I was, like, ‘I feel like I know exactly what Ice Cream is but I can’t describe it,’” says a laughing Bezic.
Crist nods. “We just both sorta knew what we were gonna do.” “Yeah, I can’t explain it.” The peculiar creative chemistry Bezic and Crist have shared since Ice Cream’s inception was on full, promising display on their 2016 debut “Love, Ice Cream,” but it’s been channelled into a far more confident and powerful flaunting of feminine greatness on “FED UP.” There are even some — dare we say — genuine pop hits in the mix in the form of the Berlinslinky “Banana Split,” the deadeyed anti-consumerist ballad “Dove’s Cry” and the utterly freakin’ monstrous “Peanut Butter,” a most Prince-ly putdown aimed squarely at every overprivileged prick in this city who thinks having a lot of money in his pocket gives him the right to treat others like trash.
Ice Cream still don’t always make it easy on the listener, but they’re not above dangling a few bejewelled carrots these days.
“Sometimes, the ‘not making it easy on you’ isn’t intentional. Well, I guess it’s semi- intentional,” laughs Bezic. “I’ll say it’s not always intentional. I think, really, our music is this tension between wanting to write a pop hit and then being weirdos and liking weirdo music and that always kinda thwarting it being a total pop hit.
“Also, though, I have deep respect for people who can write pop hits and I don’t think I can do it. I can’t write, like, a radio pop hit.”
“No,” says Crist. “I’m still waiting for my love ballad to come out of me at some point.”
A riveting and oft-danceable electro-missive self-described as about “living under late capitalism and the male gaze,” “FED UP” landed in stores and online last week and gets a local send-off by the folks behind the femme-forward Venus Fest this Friday, Nov. 29 in Chinatown at the Cecil Community Centre. And if the tunes tickle your fancy in any way, you are definitely advised to see them performed onstage, where Ice Cream has of late really come to shine. They’ve got their stern stage presence down, and seeing Bezic casually rip it up on guitar every once in awhile is a genuine thrill. As the U.K. music mag NME recently put it: “Seeing these girls live will definitely make you feel uncool by comparison.”
“I think understanding and playing with what it feels like to be a woman onstage playing rock — playing with that experience and the relationship you have with the audience — helped us turn a corner,” Bezic says of the live show.
“Yeah, I think we’re very aware that when we get onstage we feel powerful and that’s just what comes out,” says Crist. “And that’s the cool thing about being a performer — that you can take all the control if you want to and sort of manipulate a group’s experience.”