Getting the finger out

Naming your band after a Neil Young song is one way of nailing your musical colours to the mast. But for Australian outfit Powderfinger it has proved a mixed blessing. On the evidence of their latest album Odyssey Number Five, they can certainly out-grunge anything that ever came out of Seattle. But they are also keen to stress their melodic side as displayed on the current single, the eminently radio friendly, ‘My Happiness’.

“It wasn’t that we were obsessed with Neil Young,” says frontman Bernard Fanning, relaxing in his Dublin hotel before they take to the stage at the Olympia. “We’re into all kinds of music. I’m into The Beatles, The Stones, Bowie. Ian [guitarist] is into The Stooges, The Cramps. Coggsy the drummer is slightly less cool than us – he likes Twisted Sister! I actually prefer Neil Young’s earlier, more countryish stuff like After The Goldrush and Harvest but Powderfinger just seemed like a really cool name to us.

“We were actually quite surprised that the name hadn’t been used already,” chimes in bass player John Collins. “Then we discovered there was one already in Canada but apparently they’d broken up. And then there was once one in England but they’re not around any more.”

Formed in their home town of Brisbane, Queensland in 1992, Powderfinger are undeniably huge in their native Oz. Their last couple of albums have shipped multi-platinum garnering all manner of Antipodean awards, while the band are a huge live draw regularly headlining at open air festivals. Odyssey Number Five, produced by US knob-twiddler Nick Di Dia (Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine etc) has already sold 400,000 copies with the aforementioned single ‘My Happiness; reaching top five.

But being Australian, the band insist doesn’t make them any different from bands anywhere else in the world. “There is an Australian music scene but I don’t think there’s an Australian sound,” Farrell says. “It’s an amalgam of everything – American, British, European. It’s really an accident of geography where we come from. The most telling thing about being an Australian band is that our attitude is pretty relaxed. Coming from Brisbane we’re not really into big rock star bullshit. If we’d come from Sydney we’d probably be a lot different. Sydney is full of wankers. In fact there are more wankers in Sydney than probably anywhere in the world. They have this big idea that they live in the most sophisticated city in the world. They don’t!”

According to Fanning, America is where their sights are firmly set in the immediate future. “We’ve been getting a lot of airplay in the US on radio and on MTV, even more so than in Europe so that’s where it’ll probably happen for us. The whole music industry machine is unbelievable over there. It’s so streamlined and specialised. At the moment I think they’re looking for something different and they see us as different.”

“We probably won’t do anything in Australia for at least six months,” he insists. “For us it’s reached a saturation there. We’ve just done a big outdoor festival tour and they’ve probably had enough of us, they deserve a break Though our record company wouldn’t see it that way. They’d have us playing every week if they could!”

Asked finally, whether they’d ever consider updating their sound to incorporate more modern dance elements and Fanning looks genuinely horrified.

“We’re a rock band,” he states firmly. “We don’t have a DJ and we don’t want one. And if we ever wear a baseball cap we’ll always wear it forwards. And it’ll most likely be a cricket cap!

Odyssey Number Five is released on Universal