Review Summary: A fine return to form by Australia’s kings of rock.
The year is 2006 and Powderfinger release their worst album to date,
Dream Days At The Hotel Existence. It was by no means terrible, but it lacked that spark that had driven their previous releases. Little experimentation and several lack lustre singles left the band with one choice. Improve, or hand over the crown. The situation grew worse when their latest single "All Of The Dreamers" was released in September 2009. Sounding like a B-side from DDATHE, it left little hope for the rest of the album.
Now we come to November 2009. Half of Powderfinger’s fans are holding on tight, begging for a good release, and the other half have given up almost completely. What a shame too, as Golden Rule is a fine return to form. The album showcases a soaring string section on a number of tracks, and the energy their last album was missing has been restored. The usual mellow songs are here as well, no finger album would be complete without them, but this time they’re far better examples of what Powderfinger is capable of then "Drifting Further Away". "Poison In Your Mind" offers a soft, lone violin, thickly plucked banjo and gorgeous vocal harmonies, along with a guitar arpeggio that sounds like Something For Kate's Paul Dempsey wrote it. The song may be less than 3 minutes in length, but it’s far from filler material.
Even shorter than that, album opener "El Camino De La Muerte" stands at 47 seconds long, but in that time it gives a small taste of what’s in store, building from a spaghetti western arrangement of bass, rattling drums, guitar, and echoing synths at the beginning, to a short lived but lovely piano line intertwining with acoustic guitar chords. Funnily enough it’s also the intro to the closing track Golden Rule, but that doesn’t present an issue, if anything it just creates a small gimmick that will only be noticed on subsequent listens.
On the other end of the spectrum are the songs that reach nearly 5 minutes in length, namely "A Fight About Money" which hits the mark with 6 seconds to spare. Opening with spacey synths that recall Enya, quickly followed by a simple, lightly screeching guitar riff, Fanning sings in his deeper range (something he only did once on Dream Days but explores more now)
“This is not a song about victory
Its not a song about the relative worth of you or me”
The song continues like this until the chorus, where he soars into his normal vocals, the rhythm section builds and it climaxes. The song is brought down again at around 3:10 and doesn’t really pick up again, instead fading into a piano line.
I highly suspect recording in Byron Bay helped inspire "Sail The Wildest Stretch", with its sampling of waves softly crashing onto a beach and a sound in the background that resembles a seagull’s call. Exploding into its chorus the song is another strong representation of the string section, which sings with the background vocals, creating a “ooh ooh ooooh” echo, to the point where it’s difficult to tell the two apart.
Strings aren’t the only addition, however. Trumpets and horns also make an appearance in "Iberian Dreams", keeping it from sounding too similar to "All Of The Dreamers".
That’s not the end of it though, because Powderfinger prove that they can retain their old ways just as strongly as they can experiment. "Stand Yourself" is an energetic rock anthem that shows everything that made Powderfinger great while expanding upon it with horns and a soaring string section. It is the song that represents their new direction while simultaneously recalling the old, perfectly bridging the gap between the two.
There are issues present; unfortunately, it’s not all glowing brightly. Bernard comes across as bored at points, not putting the energy into it that he has previously. It’s a vast improvement from Dream Days, sure, but it’s still not quite there. Luckily the other band members support him enough to make it not too big of a problem.
Powderfinger readjust their tilted crown of Australian rock kings, not as firmly as I think is possible, but nevertheless. Ignore the lead single; it’s a poor representation of a great rock album and one of the worst songs on the album, though that isn’t saying much when every song on the album is great. Instead look towards
Stand Yourself or
Iberian Dreams as a beacon of what the band can accomplish.
Streaming Here:
http://www.take40.com/music/playlists/featured/379021/exclusive-listen---powderfinger%27s-%27golden-rule%27-album!-?p=379021.0.0
Unfortunately the second single "Burn Your Name" is refusing to load so you can, instead, listen to it here:
http://www.myspace.com/powderfinger
