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VUEweekly (Edmonton) May 9-May 15, 2002

Touring the Midnight Oil

Peter Garrett might not be able to change the world, but he's still rocking it

by WAYNE ARTHURSON

Peter Garrett is amused. The tall, bald, spasmodically dancing 
frontman for Midnight Oil chuckles when he's told where the band will 
play in Edmonton. In West Edmonton Mall. The big mall, Garrett is 
told. "The attraction of opposites will be at play there," he 
chuckles. "This will be one of the few times that I will go into a 
mall on this tour, so I'll bring my map with me."
    Admittedly, it's a little surprising that Garrett, with his long 
record as a social commentator and anti-corporate activist, would be 
amused with playing at a venue inside WEM--but he says the band still 
sees the humour in a lot of things. "There is a lot of humour in what 
we do--certainly the performances," he says. "And many people that 
make music which is above the line, out of the subterranean, in order 
to get themselves onto a record, end up in cliché-land. We try to 
stay away from the cliché and go for something which is more durable. 
But we like to relax. We'll do crosswords, hang out on the bus and 
throw darts at pictures of Mr. Bush and Mr. Chrétien."
    The last time Midnight Oil was in town was so long ago that George 
W.'s father had just been defeated by Mr. Clinton, while Mr. 
Chrétien... well, okay, Chrétien was still around. But he was a 
decade younger, and many assumed in the intervening years that the 
Oils had disappeared back into the Australian landscape along with 
Paul Hogan and our very brief infatuation with vegemite. In fact, the 
group has been working with the same lineup since 1977--save for a 
bass player change in 1987--playing shows and creating a ruckus, just 
not here in the north. They've also been releasing albums, like the 
country-influenced _Breathe_ (one of the most underrated discs of the 
'90s) and the almost hardcore _Redneck Wonderland_.
    "We've been busy making music in the southern hemisphere," Garrett 
says, "touring in our own country, connecting with a new generation 
of Midnight Oil fans, making records which some people didn't get to 
hear in the northern hemisphere, keeping ourselves stimulated and 
interested in what we were doing as a band. Other guys have been 
doing side projects and people have been going off and producing 
others. Just shaking out their own creativity and their own 
endeavours. And just hanging out at home."

Hip replacement

Much like Canada's own Tragically Hip, Midnight Oil remain popular at 
home and doesn't seem to need international success to keep the 
passion alive. "The greatest beauty of performing music or being in a 
band is you are still able to activate your passion," Garrett says. 
"You don't need karaoke; you can do it for your own living and your 
own life, and despite the fact the business is in terribly weird 
shape and looks awful from any perspective, the fallback for an 
artist is to get up onstage and sing. There's no problem getting the 
passion from that. We've done some playing in the intervening 
periods, but this time everybody felt sufficiently strongly about 
what we've been doing that we could go away and spend some time on 
the road. I mean, the road's a killer for creativity, spirit and 
passion, but it's a necessity if you want people to hear what you're 
on about."

It doesn't get any _Capricornia_ than that

What the band is on about now is a new disc, _Capricornia_. After 
_Breathe_ and _Redneck Wonderland_, it's a return to the band's 
signature anthemic sound--duelling dual guitars, driving rhythms and 
Garrett's trademark anti-establishment wails on aboriginal rights and 
environmental issues. It's nothing listeners haven't heard already 
from the band, but there's more passion and emotion in one second of 
the Oil's music than in the output of all the Creeds, Nickelbacks, 
Britneys and 'N Syncs combined. Let's face it: after all those 
insipid groups have faded from our collective memory, those three 
opening notes from the Oil's biggest hit, "Beds Are Burning," will 
still give us a chill.
    _Capricornia_, loosely based on Australian writer Xavier Herbert's 
novel of the same, was supposed to be a film project for the band, 
but it turned into an album instead. "It's a rambling, wild tale of 
adventure, culture clash and the disinheritance of aboriginal people 
in the north of our country, which is still almost like a last 
frontier," Garrett says. "This album has a spirit of landscapes, and 
love affairs seeping into you quietly underneath, and over the top 
rages the storm of history and change."
    Which bring[s] us to the key question: can a rock band--even one 
as passionate as Midnight Oil--change the world?
    "Of course not," Garrett retorts. "That would be folly and the 
height of immodesty to pretend. It can only be true to itself as a 
group of musicians, performers and writers. And in that way, whatever 
it does, whether it's a performance or an action, it may be part of a 
soundtrack or one of the triggers for change, but we've never had any 
false illusions about where rock music fits into the scheme of 
things. It's just one of our partners in activities. It's people who 
change the world, not rock bands."

Midnight Oil
With Will Hoge - Red's (WEM) - Wed, May 15