Powderfinger - Dream Days at the Hotel Existence

[Sydneyfan]

Mucho Australian excitement. If you are not familiar with this band, I really recommend checking them out - they are terrific.


Description:
The 'Finger return with their brand new album 'DREAM DAYS AT THE HOTEL EXISTENCE'...the band recorded their 6th studio album at the Studio 1 studios in Los Angeles, with Rob Schnapf producing. It's the first time the band have created an album outside of Australia.

Here's Bernard Fanning explainign the story behind the title: “The album title comes from a book The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster, which I was reading during the recording. It seemed very appropriate with its ramshackle plot, large cast of characters and escapist idealism. To a bunch of chaps from Brisbane it is very much what Los Angeles can seem like”.

Features the first single 'Lost & Running'. More details closer to release!
Track Listing: 1. Head Up In The Clouds
2. I Don't Remember
3. Lost & Running
4. Wishing On The Same Moon
5. Who Really Cares (Featuring The Sound Of Insanity)
6. Nobody Sees
7. Surviving
8. Long Way To Go
9. Black Tears
10. Ballad Of A Dead Man
11. Drifting Further Away


Lost and Running single out tomorrow ( May 12) and album out June 4.

[littledarlin]

Mucho Australian excitement. If you are not familiar with this band, I really recommend checking them out - they are terrific.





Lost and Running single out tomorrow ( May 12) and album out June 4.

yeah doing well for private school bouys hey!!

[Starlite]

Powderfinger have been forced to change the lyrics of a song on their upcoming new album.

The song Black Tears was facing a legal challenge from the defence team for Palm Island police officer Chris Hurley, who claimed the original lyrics of the song could jeopardise his fair trial.

Hurley will face court on June 12 for charges of manslaughter and assault related to the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island in 2004.

In a statement issued on Friday, Bernard Fanning conceded that the second part of the song was directly influenced by news coverage of the Palm Island case.

Fanning stated that: "Whilst we firmly believe that the song would have no bearing upon the legal process, in the interests of removing even the slightest suggestion of any prejudice, we have included an alternative version on our album."

The new version of the Powderfinger album Dream Days At The Hotel Existence will appear as planned on June 2nd.

[Jacoby]

funky

[littledarlin]

:\

not a fan however i do congratulate the band and their management on what they have achieved to promote Australian music

[Sydneyfan]

The new version of the Powderfinger album Dream Days At The Hotel Existence will appear as planned on June 2nd.

Even better. :upyours

[Sydneyfan]

The new single and video are up on their MySpace.

http://www.myspace.com/powderfinger

[Sydneyfan]

The new single is officially excellent. :rock

[la twinkle]

The new single is officially excellent. :rockMmmhmmm, I'm glad there back. :banana

[Sydneyfan]

:\

not a fan however i do congratulate the band and their management on what they have achieved to promote Australian music

I know quite a few people who think the same way. I know they aren't exactly indie, but I think they do straight-up mainstream rock better than most.

[Starlite]

I like them, but I only truly appreciate them when I'm overseas and feeling homesick.
Btw, during my recent holiday we had all the Americans rocking out to The 'Finger and Bernard Fanning all the way through Europe. :rock

[Sydneyfan]

Btw, during my recent holiday we had all the Americans rocking out to The 'Finger and Bernard Fanning all the way through Europe. :rock

:lol That's what I love about them - they play solid, unpretensious music and are proud of it. It will be interesting to see whether this new album gets any airplay in the States. I doubt it somehow.

[Sydneyfan]

cover art

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a312/cindydowling/powderfingercover.jpg

[Starlite]

cover art

Very interesting.
The first that came to my mind is "Do they not like touring?". I'm sure that's not true, but the long deserted road, a guy in a hotel room who has lost his head...

[Sydneyfan]

Very interesting.
The first that came to my mind is "Do they not like touring?". I'm sure that's not true, but the long deserted road, a guy in a hotel room who has lost his head...

Actually, that makes sense based on that picture. Its certainly something to do with feeling alone or isolated. They recorded the album in LA - maybe they got homesick for Bris-Vegas and their families?

[Jacoby]

Why is the person in it headless?

[blueone]

Mucho Australian excitement. If you are not familiar with this band, I really recommend checking them out - they are terrific.

Advice taken! Going to check out some stuff in a while. I've known of this band for a while beacuse they took their name from a Neil Young song - never listened to any of their stuff though.

[Sydneyfan]

There is going to be limited edition DVD with the album for Australia only - I think, according to Billboard.

[Sydneyfan]

This is out tomorrow.

SMH gig review is a bit luke-warm though...

YOU know, it's not that long ago that seeing Powderfinger live was a case of watching five men on stage who were desperately hoping you wouldn't be looking at them. Or, if you were looking, you would not think them anything special for being up there.

Now they launch their sixth album in the ballroom of an upmarket hotel, where the chefs come to check them out between courses, and the band members mock themselves with banter about the "artistic" thinking behind the venue (the new album is called Dream Days at the Hotel Existence, you see).

The old values have not been lost, however, as what could easily have been a 20- to 30-minute set plugging the album, before letting the freeloaders loose on the canapes and beer, was instead a full show.

As the lead singer, Bernard Fanning, pointed out, it has been a while - several years, in fact - since Powderfinger last played, and by the way the famous five (with a ring-in keyboard player) attacked their instruments and the new material, there was a lot of pent-up energy to release, particularly for the guitarist Ian Haug, who at times shamelessly sported a double-necked guitar.

That energy will continue to be in demand if Powderfinger are to convince those beyond their committed core of fans that the new songs stack up against an impressive back catalogue. And that's not a given yet. Despite the fact that I have been living with this album for almost two weeks and have heard the songs more than a dozen times, they still have a tendency to blend into one fairly generic rock song.

Head Up in the Clouds (a cross between the Alan Parsons Project and Radiohead) and Lost and Running (Fanning singing in a deeper register as the band channelled Crazy Horse and Pearl Jam) came across with more vim than on the record. And performing the politically charged Black Tears as a solo-with-acoustic moment for Fanning worked beautifully.

However, a few too many new songs seemed short a chorus or a compelling hook or two. Can you get those on room service?

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a312/cindydowling/powderfinger1607_wideweb__470x3080.jpg

[Sydneyfan]

And the review which will appear in Saturday's SMH is much the same.....


Despite the hubris of those around them, and despite being off the scene for two years now, Powderfinger remain the biggest rock band in the country. And with good reason.

Sure, radical adventure is not their game, but even the snobs must acknowledge that for a decade now they have consistently connected with the public without repeating or compromising themselves.

For example, the decision with 2003’s Vulture Street to toughen the sound and image from its predecessors’s ballad-led appeal could have backfired but it succeeded spectacularly, for the simple reason that they had 11 good songs.

The one smudge on this report card for many, in the media at least, is Powderfinger’s continued failure to translate domestic success into international (read, American) success. The band consistently deny this is an issue for them and we accept this is true. Even when they release an album such as Dream Days at the Hotel Existence, which has the kind of high-gloss and muscular framework that American radio considers “serious rock” and therefore worth playing.

That muscular framework is the defining element here. Compared with the relatively lean, agile sound they’ve perfected up to now, this is Powderfinger as the footballer who in the off-season spends his time in the gym and emerges buff and beefy. The problem is he has bulk but has traded in his nimbleness.

That a typically attractive Powderfinger ballad such as Wishing on the Same Moon is given unnecessary dramatic heft with strings, heavy synths and a curious portentousness is disappointing but not fatal. The bigger problem is that too many songs don’t take off, don’t lift you as a listener.
Take Surviving, which begins with a kind of white boy soul rock that is equal parts the Faces and Black Crowes before crunching into a chunky Zeppelin climax, complete with choir-like backing vocals. It promises to be exciting but never quite gets there.

Much the same could be said for the solid-rock-by-numbers I Don’t Remember and I’m Still Running, the lumbering swing of Ballad of a Dead Man and even the somber Black Tears (whose blunt references to the Palm Island death in custody are unlikely to impress some conservative commentators).

You couldn’t fault the playing, the singing or, most of the time, the arrangements here. Dream Days is not bad in any obvious way.
It is, though, Powderfinger’s first dull album.

[Sydneyfan]

After one listen, I love this.

[blueone]

A recommended buy then?

[Sydneyfan]

A recommended buy then?

Yes, I think so. I need to hear it a few more times, but I'm pretty impressed at first listen.

[foggy]

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not a fan

I just went and listened and I think it's safe to say I'm not a fan either. Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds very generic to me. :\ Glad those of you that like them are enjoying the new album though. :)

[Sydneyfan]

FYI Aussies - Borders has this album for the bargain price of $14.95 at the moment.

[Whiskeyfan]

It hasn't immediately grabbed me but its growing. 2 years off is def what the doctor ordered, the production seems really measured and let's the songs speak for themselves. Sounds like a band in it for the long haul.