It’s coming around round again. At least, that’s what Powderfinger fans are hoping for.
The Australian rock favorites have been dormant since 2010, when the Brisbane five-piece put a lid on their career with a farewell tour, one that shifted more than 200,000 tickets.
Something is stirring. Earlier in the week, a cryptic Instagram account popped up with the handle @thereturnoftheelectrichorsemen, a reference to “(The Return of) The Electric Horseman,” the closing track on the band’s 1996 album Double Allergic.
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There, the admin shared proof of billboards in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, emblazoned with a code and Powderfinger lyrics. Eagle-eyed observers noted the account has five horse emojis in its bio, one for each of its band members.
The plot thickened on Thursday (Oct. 8), with an email from the band’s HQ featuring the same cipher, written in white over a striking red background, along with a perplexing free verse (see in full below). It’s the same story on Powderfinger’s official Website and social accounts, which have been scrubbed – save for the one, mysterious red letter.
Whether it’s a new Powderfinger release, a reissue campaign for the 30th anniversary release of Double Allergic, or a reunion proper, time will tell. The answer might be found in the final sentence of the text “Everything else is a variable. Add enough time to enough variables and something extraordinary happens…”
Hailing from Brisbane, the ‘Finger, as they’re affectionately known in these parts, was one of the elite bands of their era, earning the distinction 18 total ARIA Awards, and closing out their career with five successive No. 1 albums, a run that started with 1998’s Internationalist.
The last of those leaders was 2009’s Golden Rule, the band’s seventh and last studio album. The five ex-bandmates — Bernard Fanning, Ian Haug, Darren Middleton, John “JC” Collins and Jon Coghill — remain good friends, and briefly reunited in 2020 for “One Night Lonely,” a special virtual concert which raised more than A$500,000 for music industry charity Support Act and mental wellbeing support service Beyond Blue. The musicians recorded their spots independently, due to the social distancing rules of the time.
In August 2023, the lads gathered in their hometown for a fan-event and Q&A celebrating the 20th anniversary of their fifth album Vulture Street. The Vulture Street reissue was a smash, as it returned to No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, creating a record for the longest stretch of time for a homegrown album to march back to the top of the leaderboard.
Unreleased, the band’s compilation of studio tracks unearthed from sessions recorded between 1998 and 2010, peaked at No. 2 on the ARIA Chart in 2020.
There’s still a lot of love in these parts for Powderfinger. When triple j’s first-ever hottest 100 of Australian songs was counted down in July 2025, the rockers nabbed the highest overall entry count with three songs — four, including Fanning’s solo effort “Wish You Well,” which came in at No. 57.
To date, the band’s biggest international hit was “My Happiness,” which in 2001 crashed Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart, peaking at No. 23.
Read Powderfinger’s cryptic message in full:
Time keeps the ledger.
Every rehearsal. Kilometre. Flight. Soundcheck. Stage. Encore. Album. Failure. Accolade. Conflict. Audience.
Every year. Every minute. Every second.
The numbers never stop.
They accumulate.
They become evidence.
Not fame. Not hype. Not headlines.
Time.
Everything else is a variable. Add enough time to enough variables and something extraordinary happens…