Midas Touch

Powderfinger sold out their debut Irish performance at Whelan s in about half an hour, yet they have no albums available in Ireland. In fact, insiders claim that the band could have packed the Olympia twice without any trouble whatsoever, and yet most Irish people have never heard of them.

Formed in Brisbane in 1992, Powderfinger have been chalking up platinum albums by the lorryload down under for years. Odyssey Number Five, their fourth album, went straight into the Aussie charts at number one upon its release last October, shifting a massive 80,000 units in its first week. They ve lifted every award worth getting your paws on in their homeland and regularly top the polls on Triple J, Australia s hippest radio station (apparently like a national version of Dublin s Phantom FM). So what is it like coming and playing a relatively small club like Whelan s then?
We started out playing places far smaller than this so we re not worried by it at all, reveals vocalist Bernard Fanning. But we gotta play really well and make people wanna come back. If you make people pay to come and see you, you ve got to give them something. There seems to be a mentality, among English bands in particular, that they gotta look really cool when they play we know we re not cool. It s rock n roll, there doesn t have to be that much fucking academic work put into it.
Bernard has a refreshingly honest viewpoint about being in a successful rock band: Some fuckwits would have you believe that this life is really hard. There are things about it that suck my girlfriend s at home and I d rather that she was here but there is nothing we would rather be doing than this.
I ve got Catholic guilt coming out my arse, he laughs, so I have to make sure I m thinking about how lucky I am to be able to spend three months sitting in my room, playing piano, guitar and writing songs. I can stop and have a ciggie or a joint whenever I want. Then I get to travel to the other side of the world and play. How good is that?
The good news for the hordes of Aussies, backpackers and music fans left ticketless outside Whelan s is that they are coming back early next year, when Odyssey Number Five is officially released here. Australia s best-kept secret?
He grins, Hopefully not for too long.