It’s been four long years since cricket-mad Brisbane residents Powderfinger last graced us with Vulture Street. That album was possibly the end of an era, as the band went to Los Angeles to record this, their long-awaited return. Dream Days At The Hotel Existence may not be 100% home-grown, but it feels every bit as tight as their previous albums and radiates a charm that is distinctly Australian. It is also, thankfully, devoid of road accident anthems. This is an album you can drive to.

The album dawns with Head Up In The Clouds, up-tempo drums cracking along and a reverberating Bernard Fanning crying out, “Every day feels the same / The bomb keeps ticking till the routine breaks.” It’s an unsettling yet beautiful ballad about the mentally unstable, the guitar dominant through the track as the vocals swim through the stereo. I Don’t Remember sounds like it’s jumped straight out of Vulture Street, Fanning’s classic vocal style and Ian Haug’s edgy guitar combining to bring as much energy out of the fizzy pop lyrics as befits their cutting break-up theme.

The now instantly recognisable Lost And Running is something different, Fanning electing to use a lower register than we’re used to. The country-style guitars fit the story perfectly, setting up the hoedown that breaks out when the vocals go back up into that strained higher pitch as the bard exclaims, “The further we slip into this rabbit hole / The harder we look for a new place to go.” It’s mesmerising songwriting which grabs you buy the hand and pulls you in for a dance.

Waiting On The Same Moon opens with a good deal of crooning over a seductive bassline, a tinkling of piano and impatient, wailing guitars. When the chorus breaks, we’re met with a wall of sound competing for the space, backing vocals fighting with drums, guitars and keyboard as the words struggle to take flight, weighed down with production-heavy emotion. This is contrasted by the sparse Pink Floyd-esque sound which echoes through Who Really Cares, as clever a rock ballad as the band have ever written. Fanning queries, “Who really cares / Who really knows / About these agents of despair / and their thrown together prose?” The song is held together by a good deal of sweaty rock & roll piano that Jerry Lee himself would surely admire.

Continuing the on-off run of heartbreak-inspired and sugary love ballads is Nobody Sees, an intensely moody number reserved for sadder moments where a little reflection and perspective is required. To put it simply, if you catch someone listening to it, offer them a hug. Surviving is a brilliant antithesis to all the built-up emotional weight the listener has been burdened with. The track’s outright optimism is reflected in the loose and loud guitar and the gospel-style vocal pile-on that brings a breath of air to the middle of the album. Long Way To Go is a thumping rock-out, filled with less despair and more acceptance than any of the previous break-up songs… mercifully. Resilient, Fanning boldly declares, “If you let go of me then I’ll let go of you.” One can only hope.

Here, the album breaks into the highly controversial Black Tears, an earthy acoustic number that clearly carries much passion for Fanning. He looks for some kind of acknowledgement of that wrongful death on Palm Island, but finds none. He asserts, “Natural love and trust / Have downed their tools and struck.” The words invoke our compassion but also dismiss us all as being responsible. It’s stinging, but rings true enough. Ballad Of A Dead Man is easily the finest song on the album. It’s an earnest desire for control that is rebuked and regretted. The subject of obsession is raised up as larger than life, “You’re exploding like a star into the gloom,” and the pounding chorus is filled with wailing guitars and haunting vocals. The emotion is palpable as, finally, the words are sung low as though close to our ear, “If anybody comes to do you harm or pin you down / I’ll take your place.”

Finally comes the album’s melancholy farewell in Drifting Further Away, its whimsical sound and airy vocals showcase the beauty of the lyrics. The songwriting here is at its zenith, and the overall theme of the album is closed out with the soulful goodbye and the inevitable final parting of the lovers, the line “You never should have let go,” taking us back to that critical warning in Long Way To Go. The story, wonderfully constructed as it may have been, has ended.

Dream Days is in some fearsome company when you consider its predecessors. To judge an album this rich in existentialist tones and surrealist musings by the benchmarks of previous releases, it won’t be expected to walk away with a swag of ARIAs. What it does offer is a contrast to the straight-up rock servings of yesteryear without changing the sound that brought the band success. Surely that’s worthy of recognition.