Dream Days at the Hotel Existence
Powderfinger
UMI,
2007
11 tracks, $22.99
Through music spanning more than a decade, Powderfinger has established itself as one of, if not the, leading rock band in Australia. And throughout that time the band has incorporated critical ideas — about religious hypocrisy, the politics of Pauline Hanson and John Howard, the drudgery of work, the pressure of lives out of control, and militarism — into songs on each of its CDs.
"Black Tears", on Powderfinger's new album Dream Days at the Hotel Existence, is more specific than any of the band's previous efforts in its political discussion. While notes on the album from Bernard Fanning, the band's vocalist, comment that the song "highlights the continuing neglect of Aboriginal concerns in Australia", its final verse — "An island watch house bed, A black man's lying dead" — inevitably reminds us of the death in custody of the Indigenous Palm Island man Mulrunji caused by a police officer. The reference is so pointed that there was a threat the song would need to be taken off the album when the officer was recently tried over the death.
Musically, Fanning himself says the album's 11 songs are a conscious move away from the more edgy rock offerings of the band's 2003 Vulture Street. They are, also, perhaps less adventurous than some of those on the earlier Odyssey Number Five.
But the parody ("I like your old stuff better than your new stuff") always threatens to become reality. Musicians are entitled to take the road life presents to them. The question is: do they drive it well? With Dream Days, Powderfinger have put their craft to the test and are not found wanting.