Sometimes superlatives are wasted. Sometimes rock journos can unleash some of the most colourful phrases from the depths of their thesauruses and still not capture the brilliance of an artist's work. Powderfinger's fourth long-player Odyssey Number Five is such a record - so simple, so restrained, yet so unbelievably beautiful that you'll find it on perpetual loop in your CD player for weeks on end, and when you go to your friend's house, it'll be on there too. This is the album Powderfinger have always threatend to make - an album which finally sees them crowned as the rightful successors to Crowded House's throne as the undisputed masters of intelligent rock music in Australia.

Unlike 1998's equally brilliant Internationalist, each track flows logically into the next, and although the album is decidedly slow in tempo, it never becomes boring. Indeed, after just a couple of spins songs like "My Happiness", about the interminable wait for a loved one to return, and the bitter pro-Reconcilliation, anti-Liberal Party stance of "Like A Dog" (the album's most rocking moment) greet you like old friends - it's almost like they have been sitting in your sub-conscious for years just waiting to be coaxed out. "The Metre" is (dare I say it) one of the best songs The Beatles never got around to writing, with a string section that lingers ominously below the surface before swelling during the delicate middle eight and taking the tune to a new level entirely. And as always Bernard Fanning's golden voice soars above proceedings in majestic fashion, occasionally backed by the the girls from Tiddas and brillaintly supplementd by the subtle keyboard tones of the renowned Brisbane session muso Matt Murphy.

But like I said, superlatives are pointless when confronted with such songwriting perfection. Odyssey Number Five stands as a monument to the power and splendour of space. Not a false note is struck, nor an extra note played. And the scary thing is, one gets the feeling their best is yet to come.

- Kris Swales