 |
tdh |
 |
|
|
Opinions |
|
|
|
Reviews |
|
|
|
Breathe |
 |
Breathe
|
Breathe |
It reveals the language-centricity of my worldview, I'm aware, but to me there is a single chapter of ethnically inflected and grand rock music that starts (because this is me) with Big Country and wends its way through Scotland, Wales and Ireland and then, with no particular regard for the miles intervening, to Australia. Midnight Oil and Hunters & Collectors are clearly, to me, part of the same musical tradition as Runrig, U2, the Alarm, the Waterboys, Simple Minds and, for that matter, on yet another continent, Juluka. There must be something about the combination of the British Empire and the marginalization of subcultures within it that produces a characteristic overtone of fierce national pride in all these bands' songs, from "Fields of Fire" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" to "Dreamworld" and "When the River Runs Dry". Diesel and Dust, Midnight Oil's seminal 1988 album of aboriginal rights and anti-industrialism, is, along with The Crossing, Amazing Things and The Joshua Tree, one of the records from this subgenre that I consider a genuine Masterpiece, with some egotistical presumption of objectivity explicitly intended. Of the band's other albums, though, only the stunning 1992 live album Scream in Blue ever came close to affecting me as powerfully. The last one, 1993's Earth and Sun and Moon, struck me as a blustering, if still basically pleasant, retread of earlier glories. It takes a lot to get me to give up on a band, though, and I'm not sure even this was really Midnight Oil's last chance with me, but whatever the case, it'll now take several more dull records to use up the credits I've added for this one.
Breathe is not, honestly, a glaringly impressive album, but that's precisely why I'm so taken with it. Instead of trying to outdo Diesel and Dust for social consciousness-raising or outright musical spectacle, this album finds Midnight Oil content to simply play, and play simply. The production (by Malcolm Burn, whose capacity for studio-gadget restraint is convincingly demonstrated on Lisa Germano's albums) is clear and uncluttered, with none of the obtrusive processing that always used to make the band sound more like a clanky contraption some demented inventor assembled in an abandoned hangar than like a quintet playing in a room. The arrangements center around guitar, drums, bass, some sparing keyboards and Peter Garrett's voice, without the strings, horn sections or multi-tracked ghost-hordes that usually hover around the fringes of Midnight Oil albums like predatory cherubim. Even the compositions feel more organic and whole than they have on recent albums. Midnight Oil songs have often, before, had a tendency to veer into angular tempo digressions at the least provocation, which at times makes me more impatient for the choruses to arrive than I think is really healthy. Here the songs are given room to grow into their own shapes for a change, with the result that the choruses feel like natural outgrowths of the verses, rather than products of daring grafting experiments, and it's possible to listen to the entire record without feeling buffeted by incessant jarring juxtapositions. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with being buffeted, which was exactly the effect Diesel and Dust, at least, was after, but I'd started to think that the band had become so accustomed to yelling and shaking you, as their normal mode of conversation, that they'd forgotten how to communicate any other way, even when there was nothing alarming to report. Thus I'm relieved to discover that for at least one album the band has written songs that are mostly not calls to arms at all. They're about the ocean, common bonds, healing, home, love and apologies. There is "Bring on the Change", which roars and lashes out like somebody went back in time and switched all of the Edge's echo boxes for overdrive pedals right before U2 recorded War, but even this is a rock song, not the book-on-tape of the righteous apocalypse. Three tracks were recorded in New Orleans, which has to have helped with the relaxation process, and another one features a vocal cameo by Emmylou Harris, whose eerie voice almost necessitates the expunging of industrial clamor from the rest of the record by its mere presence. It's not low-fi, this isn't Midnight Oil's garage-rock album, but it's one on which they sound, for once, like just a band. If there's anybody besides me who also liked the Wizard better in person than in projection, then, this record has hearts, courage, brains, snacks for Toto, and all the magic slippers you'll need. Even to get back to Australia.
Reviewer: Glenn McDonald