The Dead Heart
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Space To Breathe

(Original article online here)

Midnight Oil is back together - and alone with solo projects

On a Thursday night in a small pub in the Sydney suburb of Balmain the room is totally jammed. The discomfort is reminiscent of the heyday of pub rock more than a decade ago. In fact these are exactly the same people who crowded into the same pubs ten years previously. Tonight Midnight Oil play a warm-up set prior to a brief national tour behind their tenth album, Breathe. The set refers back to their angry indie days and forward to the warmer sounds of Breathe. Peter Garrett sings standing on the bar and the equipment breaks down, just like the old days. This is not a nostalgia exercise though. First of all there are a slew of releases from the members of the hand.

Guitarist Jim Moginie is first off the rank with Fuzz Face, an EP recorded in his garage. "Music is a way for me to stop getting depressed," says Moginie of the impetus behind the four-track EP. He says he was chasing "the thrill of invention" with the songs, which were built from first takes, while the title comes from an old guitar effects pedal: "When you use it it destroys any dynamic in the sound and turns it to static," he laughs. Moginie recorded most of the songs him-self, then worked with producer Nick Launay, who helped to edit and add atmospherics. "Everything I've done until now has come through the Midnight Oil channel," says Moginie. "I've left home at a very old age."

Then there is the Hunting Party, a studio project from bassist Bones Hillman and Chris Abrahams. "I did it because we took a year off and I saw all these other projects going on," says Hillman. "I thought, I'm a musician. I can't work with the people I've been work-ing with for eight years because everyone wants some space so I called Chris up and he said yeah. And because we started doing it at my house it didn't seem like a project that had all these pressures. We were writing very traditional songs and one day we thought it was all too predictable. So I got stoned, he had a few beers and the next minute there were tears coming out of our eyes and we were off on this other area. Chris Abrahams has successfully moved between pop music and jan, performing the former chiefly with Melanie Oxley and the latter with the Necks. The Hunting Party moves into a similarly eclectic area. Hillman does most of the singing, with Oxley provid-ing vocals on the ethereal "Grooving," while the overall texture recalls Tricky and Portishead. "it has elements of lots of things," admits Hillman. "Everyone tries to pigeonhole what you are:'Where can we put this!''How about the Bristol box!' I'd rather in the Bristol box than some boxes."

The most prolific member of the band has been drummer Rob Hirst, who has completed a benefit song, "Sun and Rain," for the Children's Leukemia Foundation and is working on a solo album for Bart Willoughby in the Alice. Meanwhile he has a second album as Ghostwriters, his partnership with Hoodoo Guru's bassist Rick Grossman. A somewhat more ambitious and sophisticated effort than their 1992 debut, Second Skin was recorded over a period of about 18 months, whenever schedules permitted. Hirst maintains that what they lost in continuity they made up for by gradually building the songs up. The lyrics are closer to the bone as well. "This is the most and honest and personal I have ever been on a record." says Hirst, who wrote the bulk of the material. "I thought it was time to say it exactly as it is. We were on the road for two years and decided that instead of watching trashy European TV I would write and write."

Hirst brings the passion he usually reserves for the Oils to this album, an intense, eclectic collection of moods and songs which range from the political to the very personal and the fictional. He also appears to be more comfortable stepping to the fore and taking over the vocals. The Ghostwriters have now signed to Mercury Records ("I like the fact that they had a lot of other independent bands in their stable") and are becoming increasingly committed to the project, rather than seeing it as simply a hobby. A short national tour in September has further consolidated the sound. Despite the large number of guest performers ("we were very quick to grab people as they came into town," laughs Hirst) the album has a very cohesive, often dark and forceful sound to it.

Ironically, the Midnight Oil album is more laid back and acoustic. It was recorded with producer Malcolm Burn in Sydney and New Orleans in what were apparently volatile sessions. "Malcolm was really good for us because he broke the mould of what we do, says Hillman. "On a few of the tracks we swapped instruments, which we had never done before. There are different opinions of him in the band. Some people like him and others think he's an arsehole. The only one he never really upset was Martin [Rotsey]. "We were doing one song and he said to me,'Come listen to this. You're fucking lazy. Then of course I'd go, 'Fuck you.' We'd have this screaming argument and when I'd get to cut the track again I'd play the thing like hell and slam the headphones on the floor. But that's exactly what he wanted. "I think he upset Pete a little bit. He'd say things like, 'Those lyrics suck.' Of course the lyricist would become defensive, but full marks for having the gumption to challenge us, it's a good sounding record for all that."

Once Midnight Oil finish a short world tour they'll return to the studio in the New Year for another album. If this album, the solo projects and their club dates demonstrate anything, it's that there's plenty still burning.

From Juice Magazine, by Toby Cresswell

(Note: this article has not been approved for reproduction.)