Bring the heat
was imperative to the Eskies they do so with new music.
They release the uncannily prescient single Say Something at the end of the month.
Temperley and Quartermain began working on the song in Melbourne as Australia’s students took to the streets to demand action on climate change.
The onslaught of the COVID19 pandemic, which demanded a united global front to battle the disease, and now the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in the US and Australia to advocate for urgent attention to indigenous deaths in custody, systemic racism and economic and life expectancy inequality, cast Say Something as a political statement from the band.
“We didn’t set out to write this song about (Black Lives Matter) … no one could have predicted what happened in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and Aboriginal people in Australia have been protesting for a really long time,” Temperley says.
“It’s just that the rest of Australia is getting on board, which is really a really positive thing.
“We were inspired by what was happening with the marches to do with the environment initially, but really, what this song is about is it’s time to take a stand.
“No one is allowed to sit on the fence any more. If you are in the schoolyard and you’re a teenager and some kid says something racist to another kid, you tell them that’s not right.
“And if you’re at the family dinner and some old person’s being sexist or making a joke about violence towards women you say ‘No, I don’t agree with that. This is what I stand for.’
“And really that is what this song means to us. At this point in time in the world, you need to actually get off the fence and take a stand.” Eskimo Joe, like thousands of fans of the band, are also intrigued to find out Powderfinger’s next move.
Their One Night Lonely concert has clocked up more than 700,000 YouTube views and bolstered their streaming stats on Spotify and Apple Music.
Before the concert aired in May, I asked frontman Bernard Fanning if they would be getting back on stage for Splendour In the Grass (which has been shifted to next July) or the allAustralian line-up for the Falls festivals over the New Year break. He cryptically answered “I will not be announcing that”, before going on to speculate about when festivals would be allowed to return. “Who wants to be the crash test dummy? And if you end up with giant outbreak that is traced back to the festival … that’s the end of the festival. Who knows?” Fanning said.
“All I can say is that everybody is starting to grow accustomed to watching stuff online, which is good because that’s all we can really do at the moment.
“But there is no way the electricity of experiencing a live performance happen right in front of you can be matched. It just can’t be.”
With COVID-19 restrictions against mass gatherings now lifted for a range of events, maybe Powderfinger headlining Falls Festival in December isn’t such a pipe dream.
And it would make sense for them to be joined by Something For Kate, who are expected to release their much-anticipated new album in the coming months. Now we’ve just got to get Silverchair back together.