"Midnight Oil is at its most convincing when it's pissed off," offers guitarist Rob Hirst, and from the opening metallic attack of the title track to the group's twelfth album, Redneck Wonderland, it's clear that the Oils are pissed off about something. Written largely in response to the anti-Asian politics of MP Pauline Hanson and the far-right wing One Nation Party currently in power in Australia, Redneck Wonderland finds Midnight Oil experimenting with new sonic dimensions and reconnecting with the sense of outrage that has fueled some of their best work.

"We're kicking back at the pervasive conservatism that's running over our country a bit at the moment," explains frontman Peter Garrett. "I guess it's inevitable that as artists that we would come back with something strong ... you know I think the guitar players just wanted to play some riffs."

The result is an album that strikes a balance between programmed loops and the raw energy of Midnight Oil's live performances. To help achieve that mix, the songs were seriously road-tested before the band hit the studio. "There's nothing like an audience for telling you when you've got indulgent," explains Garrett. "I think that we were trying to do something which most other people have either broken up by now or given up trying to do, which is to try to get better at making records ... to use some of the influences and things that are happening around us."

This desire to break new ground and at the same time reconnect with the urgency of previous albums was reflected in the band's decision to work with two different producers: the up-and-coming Magoo (Regurgitator, Front End Loader) and Warne Livesey who produced the Oils' breakthrough Diesel and Dust (1987) and Blue Sky Mining (1990). In many ways however, Redneck Wonderland is closest in scope to their 1983 effort, 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 with its combination of hard-edged sonic experimentalism and sharply focused politics. Though he maintains that the similarity was unconscious, Garrett agrees that the comparison is an apt one: "It's a survival record, isn't it?" he says. "You sort of get to a point in your career where if you're gonna bother making one at all you gotta try and really 'reach deep,' as they say in sporting parlance ... in some ways maybe there was a little bit of that going on when we came to do this one."

The result is an uneven but interesting album. Though there are moments that fall flat, the band's willingness to take risks yields pleasant surprises. The delicate "Drop in the Ocean" with it's Pet Sounds-ish melodies is fragile in a way that is rare for Midnight Oil, while "Cemetery in the Mind" delivers a perfect alchemy of electronic adventure and the Oil's unique brand of high-octane rock. With its repetition of vacuous-sounding slogans of the new conservatism - such as "tomorrow is better than yesterday, they say" -- the song urges an apathetic younger generation to get off the couch and do something.

Garrett, for one, is optimistic about the possibilities of affecting change: "[Engagement] can take all sorts of forms," he says. "I don't think it has to be conventionally associated with politics. I think it's more to do with whether we should kick the telly in or not and I get a sense that more people are kicking the telly in ... at least they are here."

DAVE DERBY
(December 23, 1998)