"Odyssey Number Five" was Powderfinger's shortest album yet. Similar to "Internationalist", it talked about political and social issues. It also had numerous songs about love. Fanning liked listening to gospel music, and to soul which is often about love, and wrote his own songs after listening to that. Reviewers disagreed on the album; "Entertainment Weekly" liked it and gave it a B+, saying the album experimented well, while Allmusic gave it one-and-a-half stars out of five, saying Powderfinger were too careful and not aggressive enough. Powderfinger toured around North America with Coldplay to help promote "Odyssey Number Five".