STACK #208 Feb 2022

FEATURE MUSIC

Peter Garrett and the late Bones Hillman at the Sound Relief Bushfire Benefit Concert in Melbourne, 2009

voice of his,“ Hirst smiles. “Live, I used to only have Bones in my monitor wedge because I knew that he would hit that note bang- on every night. We‘re an unusual beast, Midnight Oil; we‘re a hard- rocking band, but there are a lot of harmonies in most of the songs, in the choruses. So when Bones joined, it gave us a opportunity to really lift that melodic aspect, and sing material that we hitherto couldn‘t. Of course, we miss him terribly, and we‘re very fortunate to have spent those few months in rehearsal and recording that album together before we lost him.“ You‘ll hear Bones‘ unique

The Resist tour will be Midnight Oil‘s last ever live shows, something Hirst is looking forward to giving his all, playing as long as possible. “It‘s not at a Springsteen-level of 3-and- a-half hours,“ he chuckles, “but we do go pretty hard at it, and about 90% of the show is flat out, with a few slow ones. We‘ve got so many songs now we can actually almost do completely different sets for those people that might be coming twice; we can stretch out into the catalogue of 200-odd recorded songs. And for people that have maybe never heard these more obscure songs, or have a particular song that they really love, we will get around to it somewhere on the tour. “ We‘ve fortunately got Leah Flanagan and Liz Stringer coming out to do vocals,“ he adds, “just as they did on our Makarrata tour which we did last year in March and April; so it‘s great to have that extra vocal reinforcement.“ RESIST IRL: THE LAST TOUR NSW: Newcastle 23/2 | Orange 26/2 | Wollongong 2/3 | Byron Bay Bluesfest 15/4 | Sydney 21/4 VIC: Geelong 5/3 | Melbourne 9/3 | Rutherglen All Saints Estate 12/3 WA: Swan Valley Nikola Estate 26/3 SA: Adelaide 30/3 NT: Darwin 2/4 QLD: Cairns 6/4 | Sunshine Coast 9/4 | Brisbane 13/4 ACT: Canberra 19/4 TOUR DATES

Jim Moginie (“Jim‘s riff at the beginning!“ Hirst enthuses; “He‘s a riff-meister“) is beautifully crafted. It has three distinct sections through which it twists just like its namesake waterway and surrounding land, the aorta of lifeblood for 40 different First Nations, 35 endangered

vocal painted across the album, including during an interesting few moments the very end of Undercover; after Garrett sings “Keep pretending“, Bones repeats the phrase “Everything‘s okay“ to fade-out

while an electric piano ‘dream scene‘ glissando bubbles up around it. It sounds precisely as if to say, ‘Everything‘s fine? Sure, buddy, keep telling yourself that!‘ “I think that was

species of animal, and 40% of Australia‘s agricultural produce. “The parts all just seemed to work together as this strange trilogy,“ Hirst says of the song,

[Bones] added that marvellous, fluid bass-playing, and that absolutely distinctive voice of his... we miss him terribly

which moves from a rollicking rock section to a gentler piano- led belt and on to a final, poignant coda which knits it all together. There‘s a beautiful moment in the first segment, when – as Garrett sings

suggested by our producer Warne Livesey, who has been working with us for so many years and manages to add these extra touches, which

surprise and delight us,“ Hirst reveals. Another of these ‘extra touches‘ comes in Lost at Sea – about the plight of asylum seekers arriving by boat –

the line “The days when the river was running free“ – we hear the bass fling upwards in a

in which we hear creepy, hissing clangs ring out from Hirst‘s kit. “Yes! That sound is made by me running the tip of a drumstick very fast over the top of a big ride cymbal,“ he explains. “It gives a kind of swooshing sound... Warne placed it around the track, and it [gives] the sense that you‘re in the boat, you‘re a refugee, you can see the Australian coastline. The boat is foundering, water is already coming in, and you fear the worst.“ Just like the precious equilibrium of the river, Resist counteracts the quieter or vulnerable

wild little run of hope and sweetness. It‘s the sound of Bones Hillman, bassist with the Oils from 1987 until his death – from cancer, at the age of 62 – in 2020. The entirety of Resist was recorded with Hillman, and it‘s difficult not to feel poignancy pulsate through the artist‘s basslines and backing vocals. At the time of recording, says Hirst, the sessions were “full of joy“. “[On] all the albums since he came in in the late ‘80s, he added that marvellous, fluid bass-playing, and that absolutely distinctive

moments with unadulterated fury, not least from Garrett‘s vocals: see him scorn our leaders‘ “coal-fired erections“ in Reef , or question “Who left the bag of idiots open?“ in The Barka-Darling River. Resist is, Hirst agrees, as full of power and passion as any of the Oils‘ older records. “We‘re one of the few bands I can think of that has carried that anger through our entire career,“ he says. “What‘s that old line from Johnny Lydon? ‘Anger is an energy.‘ And we really believe that.“

Resist by Midnight Oil is out Feb 11 via Sony.

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