The Aussies are coming! The Aussies are coming!

Well, it doesn't have quite the same ring as that other, more famous warning of impending attack upon these shores, but it is true that the island continent has been mounting an impressive musical offensive. From Men at Work to AC/DC, INXS to Divinyls, the bands of Oz have been leaving their mark with music that reflects the youth, vitality and social upheaval of a culture that's just beginning to feel and flex its muscle.

As yet, there is not a readily identifiable "Australian sound"; rather, the latest batch of records to surface from down under ranges from the brooding political discontent of Midnight Oil to the wry middle-class wit of Mental as Anything. There's also, one must note, some weak copycat New Wave on the sampler Maiden Australia and a barrage of experimental noise from Hunters and Collectors that's an acquired taste, at best. But by and large, there is an abundance of riches in these grooves.

Tim Finn is a good case in point. A multitalented singer, songwriter, piano player and guitarist, Finn is the de facto leader of Split Enz, the veteran New Zealand band from which he took brief leave to make Escapade, his first solo album. Alone, Finn is more accessible than the Enz, penning pop compositions that sparkle with deft, buoyant melodies without ever becoming cute Muzak. He's too much a composer for that–witness "In a Minor Key," in which voice and piano sketch in tandem a winsome romantic melancholy. More upbeat is "Through the Years," with its Fifties feel and an irresistible singalong chorus. Finn's boyish vocals fall in the high-timbre range of Billy Joel and Journey's Steve Perry, making him a rare item: a radio ready-made who isn't just scattering album-oriented-radio fodder.

Mental as Anything aspire to a similar ideal of apparent normalcy, but it's really just a facade, a camouflage for their lunatic's-eye view of the world. Creatures of Leisure, the Mentals' off-the-wall second U.S. release, is vaguely countryish with overtones of lounge psychedelia and contemporary power pop. It's eminently hummable and likable, and it goes down as easy as a pint of brew on a hot afternoon, which makes it easy to ignore, for example, the fact that "Spirit Got Lost" is sung from the point of view of a guy who's died in bed. The band boasts four strong songwriters, all of whom affect a bemused ennui at love's unfailing tendency to go awry–a timeless theme of American country & western that's complemented by the trebly strum and twang of the guitars and the Elvis Presley-style croon of the vocals. Creatures of Leisure, however, reaches beyond the bathos of garden-variety C&W to that rarefied plane of insight upon which human relations are revealed to be cosmic and mundane at the same time. And it closes with the sound of a suburban lawn being mowed, laying bare the irony of their charismatic calling as musicians versus their apparent preference for the humdrum middle-class life.

Midnight Oil, Australia's most politically committed band, sits at quite the opposite extreme, eschewing middlebrow amusements for urgent communiqués, much in the manner of the early Clash. The group is quite a phenomenon in its native land; fronted by a seven-foot-tall, chrome-domed giant of a singer, Midnight Oil packs a lot of passion and firepower into their music. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1–the Oil's debut album in the U.S. and their fourth in Australia–isn't as consistently ferocious as their live shows are reputed to be, but it does have its share of awesome moments, such as "Only the Strong" and "Read about It," which are as good as combat rock gets these days. There is also an unexpected musical acumen here, as Midnight Oil proves capable of shifting from hard-core hard to folk-rock jangly within the same song. Plus, they've come up with this inspirational nugget, which deserves to be carved into stone: "In the wind/Ashes fly/Not much time/But time to try."

On the evidence of their first record, Hunters and Collectors are an agitated lot, too, though their bottled energy tends to explode in all directions at once. By far the most outré outfit here, Hunters and Collectors make a pulsing rhythmic thrust the basis for excursions into the dark interior of the human psyche, a realm where rationality yields, layer by layer, to ritual, elemental forces that take on a life of their own. With their washes of insistent, angular funk and raw, stream-of-consciousness vocalizing, Hunters and Collectors might conceivably draw you into the inner reaches of the primitive mind, but they work so against the grain that they could just as easily come off as alienating or, simply, aggravating. Be forewarned: it's quite an adventure, not for the faint of heart.

Veteran Aussie rocker Jo Jo Zep, a.k.a. Jo Camilleri, isn't nearly as far out as that, but he introduces a few new wrinkles on his third LP, Cha. He's parted with his longtime band, the Falcons, and they're definitely missed. Instead of the Graham Parker-style pub rock of yore, Cha is essentially a one-man show, and though the songs are fine, the sound is under produced, largely guitarless pop-soul with tropical flourishes. This odd formula works exactly once, on the choogling dance-club hit "Taxi Mary," but it was a major blunder to use synthetic drums and percussion on Cha, and the result, for the most part, is soul without sock.

All of these albums, save Midnight Oil's, are sampled on Maiden Australia, and a number of newer acts are represented as well, several of which – Runners and D.D. Smash, in particular–may go on to greater glory. Despite its piecemeal approach, Maiden Australia is a good place to start. But don't stop here: there's enchanting music to be heard on the road to Oz. (RS 407)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH