Cross the Border

The first time I heard Cross the Border, I was hooked by that bassline that sneaks in like a whisper and then explodes into a rhythm unlike anything else on the album. It’s not a track that grabs your attention right away, but when the chorus arrives with that clean melody over a foundation that shifts between organic and synthetic, that’s when I understand why Icehouse left it off Great Southern Land in its original Australian and New Zealand release. The song only appeared in the international editions, where the album was trimmed to fit other markets’ formats. The 16-track double vinyl version for the local audience was different: it included tracks that later ended up excluded from foreign editions, but Cross the Border was left out even from that expanded list. It’s not common for a song with that groove to be relegated, but sometimes technical details make all the difference.

Recorded in 1989, the track clocks in at exactly four minutes and twenty-four seconds, making it longer than most cuts on the album. That gives it room to develop that bridge that seems to unravel and reassemble without warning, as if time stretches just enough for Icehouse’s vocals to float over layers of synthesizers that sound futuristic yet rooted in garage rock. There’s no record of it being a single or charting, but in the album’s international versions, it ended up in a key spot: in the U.S. edition, for example, it landed among the eleven tracks on the CD, while in the U.K., it appeared on a twelve-song list where some tracks from the Australian version didn’t even make the cut. It’s one of those cases where the song becomes more memorable for what it isn’t—a track that barely exists in its own country—than for what it is.