The formula is quite simple: You hit the big beat with a big stick and score big points with big guitars and a big mouth. Indignant rage is the coin of the realm; dignified outrage is usually the whine of the tired and tiresome. In the best rock & roll, especially the protest kind, subtlety doesn't count.

Blue Sky Mining is the exception that defies and redefines the rule. As immediate in its...

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...

Peter Garrett sings with the solemn air of a funeral director in "Surf's Up Tonight," one of the 13 tracks on Midnight Oil's startling new album. There are no wipeout guitars, no squealing vocal harmonies. Instead, the song moves at a methodical march tempo, slowly gathering momentum. "There's a place where you can forget," Garrett intones purposefully. "You get wet, it's free, you get high,...

This album is the last word in rock & roll road songs. No candy-ass laments about dingy hotel rooms, lousy room service and meaningless one-night stands. Diesel and Dust is soaked in real gas fumes and caked with real grit; it shakes and roars and throbs like the giant double-trailer trucks that chew up the thin asphalt ribbons and rough dirt tracks stretched across the Red Centre, Australia's...