Melbourne power pop veterans Icecream Hands will release Pineapple Pieces on 7 August, a four-track companion EP drawn from the recording sessions for their 2025 album Giant Fox Pineapple Tree.
by Paul Cashmere
Icecream Hands will revisit the sessions that produced their acclaimed 2025 album Giant Fox Pineapple Tree with the release of Pineapple Pieces, a four-song companion EP arriving on 7 August as a digital release and limited edition CD. The Melbourne band has also announced an intimate acoustic launch performance at Kew Court House in September.
Pineapple Pieces features songs written and recorded during the same sessions that produced Giant Fox Pineapple Tree, which became one of the group’s strongest commercial performances in years, reaching No. 38 on the ARIA Albums Chart and the Australian Top 20 Albums chart.
According to keyboard player David Andrew Milne, the songs were omitted from the album for practical reasons rather than creative ones.
“When we finished recording Giant Fox Pineapple Tree we realised we had more songs than would comfortably fit on one record. These four belonged to the same family, but they deserved their own space rather than being squeezed onto the album,” Milne said.
“We love them, and it would have been a shame if they never found their way out into the world.”
The EP’s opening track, Shakespeare Always, has been released as an advance preview ahead of the full release.
The new record extends a productive period for Icecream Hands that began with the band’s return album No Weapon But Love in 2020. That release ended a 13-year gap between studio albums and re-established the group as an active recording and touring entity after years of intermittent reunions and solo projects.
Formed in Melbourne in 1992 as Chuck Skatt and His Icecream Hands, the band emerged from the ashes of Charles Jenkins’ earlier group The Mad Turks From Istanbul. The original line-up featured Jenkins alongside brothers Arch and Dom Larizza and drummer Derek Smiley. Within a year, the name had been shortened to Icecream Hands and Douglas Lee Robertson had replaced Arch Larizza on bass.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Icecream Hands developed a devoted following through a succession of melodic guitar pop releases, including Travelling… Made Easy, Memory Lane Traffic Jam and Sweeter Than The Radio. The latter earned an ARIA Award nomination for Best Adult Contemporary Album in 2000. Their 2002 song Rain Hail Shine later secured another ARIA nomination, this time for Best Independent Release.
After a hiatus that began in 2004, the group reunited periodically, releasing The Good China in 2007 before returning again in 2019 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Sweeter Than The Radio. The momentum generated by those reunion performances ultimately led to No Weapon But Love and, more recently, Giant Fox Pineapple Tree.
The 2025 album also received strong support from community radio, with singles Back On The Road and Tambourine Mountain topping AMRAP’s inaugural Community Radio Airplay charts. Critics noted a reflective quality in the record, with longtime music writer Bernard Zuel describing it as carrying “a low-level but persistent strand of melancholy” while recognising its moments of optimism.
Icecream Hands will mark the release of Pineapple Pieces with a one-off acoustic show at Melbourne’s historic Kew Court House on Friday, 4 September. The performance is expected to feature songs from the new EP alongside material from Giant Fox Pineapple Tree and selections from across the band’s catalogue.
More than three decades after forming in Melbourne, Icecream Hands continue to add new chapters to a catalogue that has long occupied a distinctive place in Australian guitar pop. Pineapple Pieces presents music that might once have remained in the archives but instead offers listeners a further glimpse into one of the band’s most creatively fertile recording periods.
Date:
Friday 4 September, Melbourne, Kew Court House
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