Review Summary: Welcome to the saving grace.
Following up from the harder, blues edged rock of Vulture Street, Powderfinger delivered a mellower, more painful, personal album called Odyssey Number Five. Although Vulture Street was the bolder, more confident album musically, the lyrics and emotion of Odyssey Number Five are far more superior, with the magnificent These Days and the uplifting ballads such as Waiting For The Sun, My Happiness, The Metre and My Kind Of Scene.
The beautiful Waiting For The Sun is the opening track. When I read the lyrics before listening to the song, I could tell that it was going to be some seriously good stuff. I wasn’t disappointed. The quiet urgency to the chorus gives real weight to the tender lyrics.
The Crowded House style My Happiness would become the biggest hit off the album, with its wistful lyrics (My happiness/Slowly creeping back, now you’re at home/If it ever starts sinking in/Must be when you pack up and go) and warbling keyboard effect.
The uplifting, crescendo build of The Metre is one of the album’s highlights. The spirituality of the chorus is wonderful as Powderfinger do what they do best: love songs with simple yet effective instrumentals.
Welcome to the saving grace
There’s a sunset on the road
Reappearing as we go
The politically charged Like A Dog is the hardest rocker on the album. About Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s hesitation to apologise for the Stolen Generation (in which countless Aboriginal children were separated from their families in the 1930s), Like A Dog raised high stakes to convey the opinion of the ‘finger:
Now we’re trying hard to reconcile a history of shame
But he reinforced the barriers that keep it the same
It’s important to note that John Howard was a very good Prime Minister. However he had Angry, Short Man Syndrome, which led him to stomp on helpless people who needed him every now and then (specifically asylum seekers).
Oddly, the title track is a one and a half minute long filler about the dullness of suburbia in Western Sydney. Up & Down & Back Again is, as the title suggests, about self discovery, establishment of identity and place in society in a similar vein to Waiting For The Sun and The Metre.
My Kind Of Scene, another radio hit, has echoes of 1998’s Internationalist with its themes of ‘dead end jobs’ and moving on to better things, featuring some brilliant drum work and a lifting chorus. Another excellent song.
These Days is truly a great song. The best Australian rock song ever apart from Khe Sanh and It’s A Long Way To The Top. This is dark times turned to a work of art, with beautiful grace and gently resigned verses and a moving, stunning fist pumper of a chorus. Simply breathtaking and astonishing, a must listen to.
This life, well it’s slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned
Control, well it’s slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned
The livelier pop of We Should Be Together Now is a slight against a casual, unfaithful lover. The epic Thrilloilogy is a six minute ode to life, friendship and death. Heavy blasts of guitar work with some dark room imagery.
The final Whatever Makes You Happy is a wonderfully touching acoustic farewell with traces of Vulture Street’s How Far Have We Really Come. The beautiful line “However it happens, I hope it’s whatever makes you happy.”
Odyssey Number Five is a defining triumph from Powderfinger’s reign as kings of the Australian music scene, which lasted for virtually the entire last decade. Between them, Vulture Street and Odyssey are two of the finest rock albums of the last ten years. And Odyssey is the better one.
