Fanning Dempsey National Park
Canberra Theatre
18/5/25
The easy path for older rock stars to take is to churn out the hits to receptive crowds until you retire. It’s a guaranteed way to have your fans leave satisfied every night. You just need to keep repeating this every year or two and you’d have a very successful life. This applies even more so when you are the lead singer from 90s icons Powerfinger or Something For Kate. There’s a back catalogue of hits that you can draw from which everyone knows and everyone likes.
However, I can’t imagine that would be too musically satisfying and that’s not the path that Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey took for their new project Fanning Dempsey National Park. It speaks to my musical taste but I’m not sure there was much more musical ground left to explore by the tail end of Powderfinger or Something for Kate’s careers. Similarly, for a solo career, rehashing their old hits or mining the same musical ground they did with their old groups doesn’t sound like it would be too interesting. Surely, part of being an artist is to try new things, explore new music and to create.
I’m not 100% sure the rest of the crowd agreed with me but I really liked it. Clues about what to expect from the set came early with the warm up music. Prince (Raspberry Beret), John Waite (I’m not missing you) and Lou Gramm (Midnight Blue) set the mood. Their new album reminds me of early Simple Minds, Icehouse and Roxy Music. It’s electro and 80s influenced, but with the steady hand of two of the greatest songwriters that Australia has produced.
The gig was played to a lightshow and background that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Countdown set. This suited their new album down to the ground.
The choice of covers might have raised an eyebrow in their previous bands, but they fitted right into the set – Wouldn’t it be good (Nick Kershaw) and Under Pressure (Bowie/Queen) explored the same musical ground as their album. They also recast some of their old hits with this new found spirit and sound. Pick You Up was especially great. It started off with an electronic keyboard setting the mood, before building into an anthemic ending.
Whether this is a whole new path these songwriters are going to take or just an interesting diversion in their career it’s too early to say. But the songs are as good as any they’ve previously written and I, for one, would be more than happy to hear more like this.
