STACK June 2017 Issue 152

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04 JUNE 2017
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BERNARD
FANNING
The follow-up and companion
to Civil Dusk is here; we spoke
to beloved icon Bernard Fanning
about new record Brutal Dawn.
We had some really
great times when we
(Powderfinger) went over
there, but there was a lot of
backslapping and industry
bullsh-t that we just couldn’t
get comfortable with. And
you know… America-bashing
isn’t the most uncommon
thing in the world these
days, and rightly so in a lot of
cases with regard to Trump
and the morons in charge, so
the line about “a well-worn
cliché” refers to both that
idea, and the fact that we
came across quite a lot of
spivs with white teeth and
flashy rings and the whole
kit, and just couldn’t believe
they actually existed.
Those Copacabana-type
toms are amazing – is this
[Midnight Oil drummer]
Rob Hirst? Is he an old pal?
Yeah, Rob – he’s just an
animal, in the best possible
way. He gave that song a massive
kick up the a-se. Those toms are his
signature, I guess. He came in and
just started winding the tuning of the
drums up, and up, and up until they
were at full Studio One reggae pitch.
It actually made the song have so
much more energy than it had prior.
Luckily he was around in Byron and I
just called and asked if he’d come and have
a go. It’s so great to get up close and see
someone like that playing.
The symbol of the blackbird turns up again
in SayYou're Mine. Is it the fragility of
birds which speaks to you?
Yeah, I think so. And ‘blackbird’ is actually a
really nice word to sing – the alliteration and
a couple of snappy vowels. Paul McCartney
worked it out long before I did. It’s not just
fragility but also the unpredictable and, I
suppose, flitty nature of most birds. They
could be sitting there calmly or take off at any
moment. And that idea of feeling an animal’s
With something like the lush chorus
harmonies in Isn’t It A Pity, don’t you just
want to do that all the time? How do you
stop yourself?
Yes, absolutely I just want to do that all
of the time. I could spend all day loading
harmonies up on songs, testing my voice
out to its squeakiest highs and greasiest
lows. But it’s part of that thing of knowing
when to stop. The harmonies on that song
were a combination of sung ones, which
was both Clare Bowditch and I, and some
generated ones from within GarageBand,
which I have never done before. If you isolate
them you can hear the hideous sound of that
vocal tuning harmonizer in there. Ordinarily
I despise that sound and think, given its
ubiquity, especially on all of the pop lead
vocals, that a lot of people will regret using
it in the future. But when it is all glommed
together with the natural voices, it sounds
pretty good.
Listening to America (Glamour And
Prestige) made me realise how much, in
terms of cause and effect, has happened
since Civil Dusk came out (August 2016).
What were you thinking of when you
wrote these lyrics?
It is a song about going to the States and
being completely under and overwhelmed.
heart beating in its chest is something
most people are familiar with. It gives
you a sense of how vulnerable they
are – that life and death are right
there.
In InTheTenYears Gone there’s a
line that goes “When you’re lying
there at night, making edits of your
life.” Do you think we all do this
personal revisionist history thing?
I certainly do it. And I think I tend to make
pretty favourable edits of myself! Most of
the evil stuff I do gets left on the cutting
room floor, never to be remembered again.
It’s really what this album is about: the gaps
between what we remember, how we see
ourselves, almost always favourably, and what
really actually happened. And then when that
is analysed carefully, how you go forward
from there. ZKR
PEACEFUL PIANO
The tinkling of ivories can be a ferocious sound (see:
Rachmaninoff), but the new release from classical label
Decca, Peaceful Piano, features more than three and a half
hours of some of the most calming piano pieces imaginable. This
beautifully blended collection will take you on a journey through
popular pieces and composers of the classical piano repertoire,
giants of the neo-classical world, well-loved movie themes, and
and arrangements of contemporary tracks like Coldplay’s Fix You
and David Bowie’s Life on Mars. Get ready to recline. AC
Peaceful
Piano is
out June 2
via Decca/
Universal.
TOURING
06/10 - 24/11
Brutal
Dawn by
Bernard
Fanning is out
now via Dew
Process.