Eskimo Joe: Of Ice and Men
Xpress April 04
Polly Coufos


Eskimo Joe are poised to crack it this time. Everything feels right for the three piece. When their debut album ‘Girl’ was 
released the guy taking stock from the warehouse must have run over a black cat, for all the kind words and airplay the 
CD attracted it didn’t quote click at the stores in the way it should have.

‘From the Sea’ was the unanimous choice for the first single, both from the band and new label, FMR. It’s already being 
downloaded faster that you can say Paris Hilton. Its four track counterpart (featuring three previously unreleased tracks) 
will be in stores on March 21. The accompanying video, shot in a Brisbane swimming pool by production company 50/50, who 
have been responsible for all of Powderfinger’s big clips, is on the music cable channels and ‘rage’ and the band is 
ready to get out and do some serious roadwork.

For their shows the trio (Joel Quartermain, Kav Temperley and Stu MacLeod) will be expanded to a five piece with the 
inclusion of Paul Keenan on drums and Dan Bull on keys. Keenan and Quartermain have been friends since they were 12 and 
first played together at 14. So far the five piece has done only two shows together, and Quartermain says they are 
feeling a little “nervy” about settling in with the new live configuration. They have no such reservations about the new 
material.

“We are just more relaxed. We’ve done it before and now we know how it works. We will scoot off wherever we have to go 
to sell it. In the studio it is the three of us and we play everything, bar the strings. We wrote, demoed and recorded 
knowing that there was no way it could be played by a three piece, but we thought we’d worry about that when we came to 
it. At its core it’s a studio based thing. We want to write as good as songs as we can and arrange them as well as we 
can.”