Powderfinger to release new album Unreleased after new song Day By Day unveiled
Powderfinger have revealed more details of when their long awaited album will finally drop and what it will contain after they stunned fans with a new song and music video with rare backstage footage.
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Powderfinger have confirmed they will release their first record of "new" songs in a decade on November 27.
The simply titled Unreleased compiles 10 tracks plucked from their vaults while trawling for bonus material to include on the recent 20th anniversary edition of the seminal Odyssey Number Five album released last month.
The first taste, Day By Day, originally cut during the sessions for 2003's Vulture Street, revealed the band at the height of their rock powers despite the long hiatus between gigs and studio sessions since the Sunsets farewell tour in 2010.
It was one of about 15 songs the band found which had been shelved from records made from 1998's International to the 2009's Golden Rule.
“We were always careful to keep our albums to around about vinyl length," the band said in a statement announcing Unreleased.
"While we searched for material from the ON5 writing and recording period, we kept uncovering long forgotten tunes that were unmixed, unfinished or unsuitable for the purposes of the records we made.
"We narrowed it down to about 15 and then down to a final 10. It brought back lots of memories and stories and made it clear how high we had set the bar with regard to the quality of songs we released.”
POWDERFINGER'S NEW SONG
The searing guitar interplay of the first bars of Powderfinger’s comeback single Day By Day makes you wonder why the hell the band ever broke up.
Their first “new” music in a decade is a throwback to the raw, loud rock’n’roll the band offered up on their 2003 chart-topping record Vulture Street.
The ‘Finger premiered the official video for Day By Day on Friday, sharing never-seen-before footage of them performing on stage – and dad dancing backstage.
While they have never played down the “messy” democracy and tensions which led to their split in 2010, the new video shines a light on the band members’ camaraderie on the road.
Day By Day is a love song of sorts, with frontman Bernard Fanning’s lyrical gift for between-the-lines political and social commentary, Day By Day is an air guitarist’s dream.
The playing of Darren Middleton and Ian Haug – including a cheeky solo which sounds like it’s been plucked from the ’70s – recalls the great guitar pairings of Angus and Malcolm Young and Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood.
The song is live on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music.
Day By Day was unearthed from Powderfinger’s archives when the band was searching for bonus recordings to add to the 20th Anniversary reissue of their seminal album Odyssey Number Five, which re-entered the ARIA charts at No. 2 last weekend.
It was originally recorded at Sydney’s famed 301 Studios but never finished.
“Day by Day was never completed until we opened the archives and went sniffing around for tracks that had never been released,” Fanning said.
“We never even really had a rough mix of it as we had obviously decided at the time that it didn’t quite fit with the rest of the songs on that album. Looking back now, I’m not sure why and I’m actually amazed we didn’t find a place for it on the record.
“Once we found it, we had (producer) Nick Didia remix it and get it into shape.
“Like a few other songs on Vulture Street, it deals with the temporary nature of life and is a call to live in the moment, to be present.”
Day by Day // Out 18.09.20 // Pre-save now: https://t.co/OUIoM3VDdF pic.twitter.com/zI8ndeqJG4
— Powderfinger (@powderfinger_au) September 14, 2020
It is astonishing, with the benefit of hindsight, the band didn’t include it on Vulture Street as it sounds like a perfect fit alongside that record’s singles including (Baby I Got You) On My Mind, Since You’ve Been Gone and Love My Way.
But Fanning, Haug, Middleton, bassist John Collins and drummer Jon Coghill were renowned for the fragile democracy which underpinned their creative and business decisions.
And it would have taken only one dissenting opinion to put Day By Day on the shelf.
The frontman said the exercise of revisiting their past had been “weird” at times.
He said they had uncovered many demos, bits of phone voice memos and incomplete studio versions to polish up and feature on their upcoming record of unreleased songs.
“There’s a lot of stuff from the bandroom, phones, s****y four tracks, everything from the worst quality to the best quality stuff which was actually mixed for records but didn’t make it onto records,” he said in May.
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“There were songs we did maybe a few times in the band room and within (the) first few seconds of a song that I hadn’t heard for 20 years, I remembered it and the lyric was there in my head and I knew what it was even though it was stuff I hadn’t thought about for a really long time.
“It kinda showed us what a high bar we set for ourselves. There’s a lot of really good quality stuff that just didn’t make it.
“We were always determined to make records shorter than longer.”
Powderfinger have also been trawling through their photo and video vaults for the Day By Day music clip, which will go live on the band’s YouTube channel at 5.15pm (AEST) today.
It’s a nostalgic collage of performances and behind-the-scenes moments – and bad Fanning haircuts.
It follows the live-streamed concert One Night Lonely in May which has had more than 800,000 YouTube views.