Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Powderfinger, Universal Music 2020.
Fans of Powderfinger are eagerly awaiting the release of the band’s first album in eleven years, but don’t get your hopes up for a reunion any time soon.
Day By Day is the first single from the new album which is due for release “sometime this year”.
Like most successful long term bands, Powderfinger has an archive of recorded material that, for one reason or the other, was never released.
In Powderfinger’s case that treasure trove amounted to approximately 50 songs and the band has used the COVID lockdown time to carefully re-evaluate them and select the best 10 for release.
The whole project came about when the band were tasked with producing the 20th anniversary reissue of Odyssey Number Five.
That led them back to the vault and their reaction was that they had a bunch of “pretty good songs” that they should do something with.
The songs span about a 10 year period and comprise material that didn’t make the cut for a variety of reasons that have little to do with the quality of the songs but rather that they didn’t fit with the other songs on the albums.
Day By Day is a case in point, it’s a classic Powderfinger track with a great Bernard Fanning vocal and stadium production.
It’s amazing that it wasn’t released as a stand-alone single.
The earliest track on the yet to be released album goes back as far as their third album Internationalist which was released in 1998 and the others come from the ensuing 10 years.
And this new album may not be the last we hear from Powderfinger – remember they found 50 songs and are only releasing 10.
The release of Day By Day and announcement of the new album doesn’t mean that the band are planning on reforming, nor writing new material, but it does give all of their fans something special to look forward to this Christmas.
