Midnight Oil

Campaigning Aussies don’t mince words on first studio album since 2002.

Protest songs in rock almost seem like a quaint relic of a bygone era these days. So maybe it’s not a moment too soon for these veterans of polemical pop to return to the studio. And they leave nothing “open to interpretation”.

This 33-minute mini-album features an extensive guest list of indigenous Australian musicians, with an avowed mission to “urge the federal government to heed the messages in the Uluru Statement From The Heart”, the 2017 petition calling for a constitutional indigenous voice in Australia.

Even if you don’t feel particularly qualified, as a Brit, to ‘sit down and talk about appropriation… compensation… reconciliation’, as Peter Garrett urges over the infectious chug and rumble of opening track First Nation, the music hits hard enough on its own. Lead single Gadigal Land is a stomping, hornripped rock’n’soul affair, before Terror Australia does the opposite of what it says in the title in a hauntingly sad piano lament.

In case you’re wondering what the Uluru Statement From The Heart contains, it’s read out in full before the likeably upbeat closing campfire singalong Come On Down. ■■■■■■■■■■