
Bernard Fanning has accumulated one of the most celebrated songbooks in Australian rock. With and without Powderfinger, he has released 11 studio albums and numerous songs now ingrained in the Australian psyche, including My Happiness, These Days, Sunsets, Burn Your Name, Wish You Well, Songbird, Blue Toowong Skies and Belly Of The Beast.
Paul Dempsey’s band Something For Kate enjoys the distinction of flourishing on the Australian rock stage for 30 years, broken only by myriad solo and collaborative projects which have maintained a rare continuity of acclaim and excellence.
Together, as Fanning Dempsey National Park, their new duo project, they sought to have fun making an album (The Deluge) that they might not have created otherwise within the parameters of their ‘regular day jobs’.
Recorded in Sausalito, San Francisco (at the famous old Record Plant, now called 2200 Studios) and a studio in Norway, followed by a trip to Berlin to film a video clip for one of the tracks, Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips put it to Bernard and Paul that surely this was just an excuse to travel to pleasant places around the world. Without hesitation, they agreed with my summation, adding that all they wanted to do was to have fun recording and visit places that offered beautiful food! It’s no surprise then that the finished product is a fun, upbeat slice of electro-rock, embracing the spirit of 80s pop rock, with a nod and a wink to the era’s trailblazers.
In this zoom interview with Fanning Dempsey National Park aka Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey, we discuss the creation of their new album titled The Deluge, including what gear they used and how they intend to bring the album to life on stage.
MORE ABOUT FANNING DEMPSEY NATIONAL PARK
Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey are two of the most revered and successful Australian artists of the last 30 years. THE DELUGE, their extraordinary new adventure with a killer international band, FANNING DEMPSEY NATIONAL PARK, is their instant classic debut.
The two singer-songwriters’ solo works and monumental respective bands, Powderfinger and Something For Kate, account for nine number one albums, millions of sales, a staggering 38 songs in Triple J’s Hottest 100, scores of awards from ARIA to APRA and beyond, and reputations among the most skilled and thoughtful writers of their generation.
For both artists, THE DELUGE explores new terrain. “We agreed straight away there’s no point doing something together if it’s going to be what people think it’s going to be,” says Paul. “It’s not the two of us with acoustic guitars singing campfire songs.”
The guiding principle was sonic, Bernard explains. “We kind of set the goalposts between 1977 and 1985, that era where synthesisers were starting to edge out guitars; lots of new tones and sounds driving change in music. It’s still a kind of a rock album, but it’s clean. It’s not Kraftwerk. But it’s not grunge either.”
The pumping updraft of the lead single, Disconnect, is a perfect indication of the chemistry at play. Ethereal synths, robotic pulses, thwacking drums, stabbing horns. A cold, shiny sonic landscape softened by two of the most impassioned and distinctive voices in Australian rock, it’s a synergy both familiar and radically evolved.
You may hear the tangled DNA of Powderfinger and Something For Kate in vivid flashes here and there, maybe in the warm melody and open-hearted reflection of Blood, or the serpentine form and withering character portrait of Born Expecting, But the electronic washes, synth arpeggiators and motorik rhythms bring new skin to the game.
“We kept reminding each other there were no rules,” Paul says. “Someone would say, ‘Hey I have a chorus for this,’ or ‘This isn’t quite finished’, or ‘Here’s a complete song’, which the other person might add colour and texture to. We just kept saying over and over, it had to be fun.”
Bernard and Paul have been fellow travellers since the heady alt-rock ‘90s. The world witnessed their first DIY duet during the lockdown panic of 2021: a lean acoustic simmer through Queen and David Bowie’s song for intense times, Under Pressure. That choice was within a defined ballpark of shared musical passions. In early 2020, the pair had joined the stage spectacular Celebrating David Bowie, the all-star tribute to the late Starman performed by handpicked Bowie alumni and aficionados at the Sydney Opera House.
“Bowie was sort of the pinnacle of coolness in the era we’re talking about,” Bernard says, referencing the electronic Berlin chill of ‘Heroes’, the angular art-rock of Ashes to Ashes and the kinetic rush of Let’s Dance. “But we also love Duran Duran and Robert Palmer, Split Enz and John Hughes movies. That whole time spectrum is incredibly rich in sounds and ideas.”
Paul mentions the bracing synth-rock attack of Gary Numan and the game-changing electronic scores of Wendy Carlos (A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Tron). “From talking about that era and all that music that we loved we came to this idea that, ‘Well, let’s just push the guitars to one side and try out a whole different palette’.”
Random ideas became finished demos in a flow of technological process and organic instincts. The Deluge emerged from Bernard’s experiment with monochromatic rhythm and vocal melody, coloured by Paul’s wild spasms of treated guitar and synth. Eyes Wide Open mashed a piano ballad to relentless machine propulsion, the two singers trading verses like cannoning thoughts.
“Every song came together really differently,” Bernard says. “The only thing that was consistent in that regard is that Paul’s production skills are far superior to mine, so I would send him a demo of something and he would basically take that and redo it so it was done.”
“I can’t believe how prolific Bernard is,” Paul says. “He has an excellent habit of finishing everything he starts. Whereas I have a tendency to get carried away with sounds and parts and adding ideas, so I end up with endless bits of verse or chorus sitting on hard drives.”
For the recording proper, top of the pair’s wishlist was producer Craig Silvey, the Grammy-winning studio alchemist behind albums from Arctic Monkeys, Sam Fender, The National, Florence and The Machine and countless others.
Picking up from Bernard and Paul’s final “bombastic” demos in a Norwegian studio, Silvey opted for a different sonic approach and a depth of commitment that found him travelling from the UK to San Francisco and final sessions in Byron Bay, engineered by the legendary Nick DiDia. “We’re not making a ProTools record here,” was his recurring reminder.
“Craig learned his craft in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the old American method of recording,” Bernard says. “He knows how to capture that essence of a band playing live in a room, but he’s really using the studio as an effect; as an instrument.”
The band? The pair knew drummer Michael Urbano and and bassist Craig McFarland from their Celebrating David Bowie adventure in 2020. Convening at 2200 Studios in San Francisco in the US spring of ’23, synth player Adam McDougall completed a line-up with the chops and sense of invention to deliver THE DELUGE to its thrilling conclusion.
“We didn’t want it to sound like a Fanning record or a Dempsey record, we wanted it to sound like a band,” says Bernard. That was the point of the National Park moniker, Paul says. “We wanted the sense of an organisation bigger than the two of us. That’s what we got. These guys were just really excitable the whole time. The level of enthusiasm was awesome. We settled on the name,” he adds, “because it’s so pompous that it made us laugh every time we said it.”
Silvey’s final mix is panoramic. The monster rock eruption of Never Pass This Way Again captures the vintage exhilaration of a hot take in a live room. Strangers chills in a layered icehouse of chugging, squiggling synths and murmuring voices.
Meanwhile, as per the black comedy of Dunning Kruger National Park and the sombre political stocktake of King of Nowhere, the whole flight of sonic adventure is balanced by the pensive, sometimes scathing outlook of two songwriters at a mutual peak of craft and insight.
“They mostly involve people failing to live up to our lofty expectations,” Bernard says with a laugh. “There was no conscious idea to say the world sucks but I guess it’s an upshot of the times we’re living in. But I really love the push and pull of that dark tone and how fun the music is. Remarkably for us two, you can even dance to some of it.”
“I think you can sing about things that scare you, or things that are concerning about the current state of affairs, but it can still be fun because you’re releasing something; you’re finding a way to express it,” says Paul. “I can’t wait to play this stuff live. Some of the lyrics might be quite serious but the energy and the vibe of it is all going to be huge fun.”
FANNING DEMPSEY NATIONAL PARK TOUR DATES
THE FORTITUDE MUSIC HALL, BRISBANE
FRIDAY 11 OCTOBER SOLD OUT!
ENMORE THEATRE, SYDNEY
SATURDAY 12 OCTOBER
HINDLEY STREET MUSIC HALL, ADELAIDE
FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER
FORUM, MELBOURNE
SATURDAY 19 OCTOBER SOLD OUT!
FORUM, MELBOURNE
SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER NEW SHOW
ASTOR THEATRE, PERTH
THURSDAY 31 OCTOBER NEW SHOW
ASTOR THEATRE, PERTH
FRIDAY 1 NOVEMBER SOLD OUT!
THE TIVOLI, BRISBANE
SATURDAY 9 NOVEMBER NEW SHOW
Visit www.fanningdempseynationalpark.com for all ticket information
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