Midnight Oil, Resist (Sony, 2022)

Reviewed by Null and SoDak

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

—Emma Goldman

Much like the recent scientific reports about global climate change, there has been little attention given the new Midnight Oil record Resist. It is their first proper album in 20 years, when they went on hiatus following the release of Capricornia. In between, they did a random gig here and there, until they fully reformed for a world tour in 2017. The two of us were lucky enough to see them on that tour, fulfilling a long-time wish, as we are both lifetime fans of the band. The show was amazing. We were moved to dance and sing the whole set, occasionally shedding some tears. Their music does this, uplifting us, while hitting our hearts. It is quite remarkable. Fortunately, the tour inspired the band to record new music. They started by putting out a collaborative EP, The Makarrata Project (2020), and then delivered the full-length Resist in February 2022.  

The Oils have always been a pretty consistent band. Yes, their sound fluctuates some between albums, but they are almost always catchy, instantly recognizable, given their sound and the vocals, and political, particularly when it comes to environmental issues, indigenous rights, and a critique of colonialism. We still get chills and goosebumps when listening to all of their records. There are so many songs that are often running through our heads, such as “Outside World,” “Short Memory,” “US Forces,” and “Power and the Passion,” and those are just from one record from the early 1980s. Thus, there is often some hesitancy when a defining band releases a new record, only because it is hard to come back after twenty years and to make an album that is urgent and sonically propulsive, which in turn is also as beautifully delicate as their legend demands. Yet, the Oils fully delivered. They came roaring back with one of their greatest records. We are still marveling at the excellence of these songs. 

Resist is a phenomenal album in which each member of the band brings their A-game. It is a distillation of everything great about the band: the anger and guitar-driven punk urgency of their early years, the bass and drum propulsion of their middle period, and the acoustic strumming and tenderness of their classic album Breathe (1996). The emotional journey, created by the music alone, is truly stunning. The bass and drums are often hypnotic, at times they are foreboding, complementing the lyrics that speak to the climate emergency. At other points, the music swells hinting at the possible rising, an emerging revolution that needs to create a new world, beyond the nightmare of global capitalism.   

Upon first listen, it is astonishing how young and vibrant the band sounds. The Oils are not standing on their laurels or taking a moment for granted. The production is warm and gut punching; the lyrics are filled with hope and vitriol. The Oils are not sidestepping the climate crisis or playing nice with the powers that dominate the planet. They are grabbing industrial capital and one percenters by the throat, marking the lines for battle.

The opening track, “Rising Seas,” begins as a mournful epitaph before it kicks into classic Oils rock. It starts, “Every child put down your toys / And come inside to sleep / We have to look you in the eye and say we sold you cheap / Let us confess / We did not act / With serious urgency / So open up the floodgates / To the rising seas.” With these lines, we sit contemplating the seriousness of the moment and implications that are continuing to play out in everyday life, as the world is on fire, as depicted on the back cover of the record. A minute into the song, the guitar, bass, and drum lock-in, powerfully driving the song forward. We crack up the volume, feeling the power. We start doing involuntary Peter Garret angular dance moves, as he sings about the “temperature rising,” “climate denying,” and “Wall Street…jumping” as profits are climbing. It is almost too much tension by the time the chorus kicks in “We’re all refugees / And in many countries they adore celebrities.”

The second track, “The Barka-Darling River,” begins with a killer guitar riff, reminding us that the Oils have always been a punk rock band. We turn the volume up louder. The windows of the house are shaking. Peter sings, “Standing in the house of the founding fathers / It’s a house that has not been well looked after / There’s a fatal flaw in the mighty rafters / There’s a rule of law, written by the cotton masters.” These lyrics are so profound, lingering in relation to a song that seriously rocks. Then the song takes a sudden turn toward a torch-waving ballad, as Peter sings, “Who left the bag of idiots open? / Who drank the bottle of bad ideas? / Who drew the last drop from the bottom? / Good people are forgotten.” We are reminded that we are part of a long, serious struggle: “Let’s shake some truth out of the jar / Let’s kick some crooks out of the kitchen.” The song ends with a refrain, with strumming guitars, a delicate piano part, and rising voices, focused on remembering all the nameless folks throughout history who have struggled and died in the hope of making the world a better, and saner, place.  

Resist continues in this same vein, moving back and forth between tender melodies as odes to a fragile world to propulsive and urgent rockers. Often these two elements find a home in the same song. The personal and political are often intertwined, reminding us of how beautiful and fleeting our lives are. “Tarkine” offers a touching memory regarding a disappearing forest, which once provided refuge and solace. 

“At the Time of Writing” starts with a saxophone accompanying a driving guitar line, creating an ominous feeling. By the time the chorus arrives, we have goosebumps, as we sing, “At the time of writing we were in our heads / At the time of writing we are good as dead.” This song stands beside “Forgotten Years” and “Dead Heart” as far as a classic anthemic chorus by the Oils. The words are rhythmic, reflecting on the tendency to distance oneself from responsibility. It eerily captures our current moment.

The record is filled with killer riffs and bone-chilling lyrics. Much like New Model Army, the songs simultaneously hold a mirror up to the bleak reality, while also creating a spark of hope, a light, in a darkening world. In the rockin’ song “Nobody’s Child,” Garrett sings, “Beauty, love and compassion / Spread it everywhere / ‘Cause nothing else will do.” Near the end of this track, he pushes his vocals to a point where he almost sounds like he is desperately screaming. It is quite moving.

Jim Moginie, who plays guitar, keys, and sings background, writes some of the most biting lyrics on the record. The song “Reef,” about the global demise of coral reefs, opens with, “We’ve got the green light / We’re gonna dynamite / A world heritage site / Scientific recourse / Try to keep them so short / Hey, never read the details / Says it needs protection / But we’ve got elections / Coal-fired erections / We’re gonna make it pay / We’ll do it our way / So how about a railway.” He captures how capital is driving the extraction of coal for power plants simply to expand profits, while “trashing our ecology” and imposing “environmental injury.” The needs of capital exist in complete contradiction to what is required for a sustainable society. As Karl Marx emphasized, “Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth.” He stressed that human society must preserve the conditions that support life as good heads of the household in order to bequeath the earth to “successive generations.” On “To the Ends of the Earth,” the opening lyrics are, “People of the world rise up / We have been unconscious for too long / Every creature drinks from the same cup.” This haunting song warns that we are “Canaries in a fossil fuel gumbo / 450 parts per million CO2 / Industry can’t give you a clean bill of health / Politics has sold its soul by stealth.” Despite the threat, the Oils stress that “we seek a new creed” in this shared history, where we will fight until the ends of the earth for a new future. 

Continuing with this theme of struggle and resistance, Jim writes in the tension-filled title track, “Putting flowers into guns / This is not the summer of love… / Free market and labour rights / women’s vote and hunger strikes.” As the old folk song pronounced, “There is power in a union,” in this case a global movement against capital and its war on people and the earth. 

Every song is filled with memorable melodies, urgent and dramatic emotions, and insightful lyrics. This is truly an album for our times. Listen to this record, with lyrics in hand. The Oils directly speak to what so many of us are thinking. As Emma Goldman noted, the revolution is also about embracing life and joy. The Oils capture this beautiful, this power, while also honing our sights on the powers that be, as a social revolution is absolutely necessary. This record is one of the timeliest and most important albums the Oils have made, by a band that has consistently accomplished this task time after time. We wish many other artists could accomplish similar things on this front. The Oils are on a mission. Resist is a masterpiece. Sing, dance, and engage in the struggle. The time is now. 

Big Red Machine, How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? (Jagjaguwar, 2021)

Reviewed by Null

Big Red Machine’s How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? was on my Musical Obsessions of 2021 list published on Tickle Your Taint Eclectic Music Reviews last December. I wanted to briefly return to it for a short review to explain how and why it became one of the records I listened to the most last year.

I don’t remember how or why I was guided to this unique record, but it was partially due to my ignorance that it became such a mysterious curiosity. I had no idea at the time that it was, in essence, and “indie-folk” super-group with a semi-revolving door.

First, let us note the elephant in the room, or should I say, not explore it…just yet. Taylor Swift does sing lead vocals on one track, but I will deal with that distracting detail later. Let us begin by returning to my ignorance.

Big Red Machine is primarily a duo made up of Justin Vernon and Aaron Dresner. I was unaware at the time that Justin Vernon was Bon Iver, or part of Bon Iver. Furthermore, I had never heard a Bon Iver record, so I wouldn’t really know what significance that would have on the record. I knew that Aaron Dresner was a member of The National, but my knowledge The National was next to nothing.

As for the semi-revolving door mentioned above, here is a list of all the people who contributed to How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? notwithstanding those previously mentioned: Anais Mitchell, Fleet Foxes (Robin Pecknold), Ilsey, Naeem, Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan, Shara Nova, La Force, Ben Howard, and This Is the Kit. Who are these people? Granted, I had heard of Fleet Foxes, but did not know their music at all, but that was about it.

The first time I listened to the record, it was amusing, fresh sounding, sometimes off-putting, and genuinely moving in turns.

My immediate take away was that there were three absolutely brilliant songs on the album, which is the reason I kept going back, “Latter Days,” “Phoenix,” and “New Auburn.” These songs alone could have been my favorite songs of the year. The album is bookended with its two best songs. It opens with “Latter Days” and closes with “New Auburn,” both of which have Anais Mitchell at the helm.

“Latter Days” is an incredible song about the current and forthcoming catastrophic events brought on by climate change. However, it is dealt with on a personal, subjective level, which makes its power and relevance that much more jarring and immediate. The beat has a mellow, melancholy fumbling effect, as Dresner’s nostalgic upright piano sound sets the tone. Mitchell’s voice is beautifully haunting as she begins,

“How long?” is what you ask / “How long do you think it’s gonna last?” / You, at the corner store / You were stocking up before the storm / Stacked yourself against the odds / Talking back to “an act of God” / You and your clever mouth / You were laughing when the lights went out.

This first verse sets the stage for the ignorant and quick-witted cynicisms toward environmental issues over that last half century, as well as a portrait of the real response of the “everyman” in the grocery store.

In the chorus that follows, they are “found” presumably after the storm, with “our arms around each other…in the latter days.” The images this song paints in my mind are haunting.

The next chorus asks a similar question at the water’s edge; “How high do you think it’s gonna get?” The lyrics then fall back into childhood memories, of drinking too much from plastic cups and passing out on your childhood bed with dreams in your head. 

Clearly, those days are over, but the trajectory was present all along, as in the next chorus the person is “found” where they lay, “as you called out for your brother / In the latter days?”

Shortly after, the song ends with another chorus about “sheltering in place,” until there is “no hiding place,” and the only recourse is to call each other brothers, but is too late…in the latter days.

This song seems to sum up all my worry and anxiety about climate change in just a few minutes. It is at once soothing, but devastatingly resigned. It’s a glaring portrait of inaction.

Like the first song, the closing track, “New Auburn,” is sung by Anais Mitchell with Dresner on his upright piano. However, it is more lower key and gentle than “Later Days.” The lyrics tell the tale of traveling out of the city to a rural lake without cell phone towers or radio reception. In essence, it is a road to freedom. However, it is also a familial place as the lyrics point out specific landmarks along the way. This path has been traveled before. Though the lyrics are clearly the subjective recollections of the author; the landmarks are drenched in sentimental meaning and memory, which the listener cannot begin to understand specifically. The result is that listeners fill in that space and the weight with their own memories. This is the true universality and magic of music, as I cannot make it through this song without crying. As a child, I would often meet up with my father’s side of the family on an island in Lake Vermilion in northern Minnesota. It was isolated notwithstanding the anticipation of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Those memories are some of the greatest in my life. As many of my family members, including my father, are dead, this song is nothing if not an epitaph to my childhood and those times that are forever waning in my memory. It speaks to the larger experience of life itself. At one point the song asks, “Who am I to listen? / Who am I to see? / Who am I to notice which way a tree / Falling alone falls silently?”

It is so random and unique to be alive at all; one is often baffled at this brief moment in time before all returns to dust. What is it for?

It is the last lines that split the heart wide open, as the question is posed again, but this time with an answer: “Where do we come from? / Out of thin air. / I hear you whisper in the back of my hair.”

That is the best and only answer one is going to get. “New Auburn” is a gorgeous and devastatingly beautiful listen every time. I have a long list of songs that slay me, and this one is near the top of that list.

The other song that rose to the top is the third track on the album, “Phoenix,” which is sung by Pecknold and Mitchell. It is the bastard child of The Band’s “The Weight.” It even evokes the “weight” in its lyrics. Pecknold takes the verses and Mitchell comes in for the choruses. Pecknold’s voice reminds one of the Dylan period after 1966 – think John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and Self-Portrait. It is of a much lighter affair than the aforementioned songs, and I’m not sure what it is about, other than something to do with power, or responsibility, or ivory towers, or “gripping the wheel to tight” on the journey through life…or something. Maybe it is about all of these things. I don’t know. I will say that one day I listened to it on repeat all the way to work and all the way home, which is about 10 times. Something about this song is melancholic, yet a comforting lubricant to the previous songs. I must also send out props to the drummer, JT Bates. He plays on many tracks on this album, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by electronic drums, but he has a signature sound wherein he casually moves around the floor toms like slow, rippling water over rocks in a stream. I adore everything about this track. Another magical aspect of this track is the subtle and tasteful horns in the background. It’s a masterpiece.

What does the rest of this album sound like? Well, I am an album guy, as opposed to a Spotify single-track, type of person. As these three brilliant songs are part of a much larger story, I did eventually fall in love with the whole album, but the relationship was confusing and rocky at first. There are several songs with weird, syncopated drum beats that quickly become infectious. From a percussive perspective, they are beats that keep on giving due to their complexities. These are often aligned with, who I later learned, is Vernon, who sounds like he sings drunk with cotton balls in his mouth. Often his lyrics are also syncopated, which is unsettling at first but quite captivating in the long run. Eventually, I came to understand his style of singing and mistook the “drunken cotton balls” for a warm baritone. He sings a song called “Mimi” with a woman named Ilsey. Her voice is crystalline. At one point in the chorus they sing different lines at the same time and it is irresistibly beautiful and catchy. Later, Dresner chimes in with a different repeated refrain. It’s magical. I think the song might be about smoking pot or making love in a garden, but probably not.

Vernon also sings the song “Reese,” which is instantly likable. There is a subtle, wailing guitar mixed into the background, which is a secret ingredient.

The other issue I initially struggled with concerning Vernon’s tracks was that fact that half of the time he has a weird electronic distortion on his voice. I fucking hate auto-tune, but I’m not so sure that this was what he was using. As he does it so often, I eventually got used to it and it became a hallmark of the album as it presented a nice juxtaposition with the more naked tracks. Part of the time his vocals are used as an additional percussive instrument with the already multi-tracked syncopated drum patterns. It seems that many of the things I didn’t like about the album at first, I eventually loved, as they became part of the journey of this most peculiar album.

Vernon has the most prevalent voice on the album and even sings background on “Latter Days,” and “Phoenix.” Though his songs tend to be the most abstract, they eventually grow on you and leave an emotional residue of their own.

The other big player on the album is the aforementioned Dresner. He sings several songs with a gentle delivery accompanied by his acoustic guitar strumming or the upright piano, which makes an appearance on almost every track on the album. He is the opposite of Vernon in every way. “Ghost of Cincinnati” is an acoustic gem about living on the brink of a mental break:

‘Cause I’m over myself / I’m over the hill / I’m Over-the-Rhine / For the millionth timе / I’m overspеnt / Overworked / Overlooked / I’m Over-the-Rhine/ For the millionth time

“Brycie” is a heartfelt song about brotherly love. Dresner’s songs are often mantras to get one through the day.

Now, back to Swift. She sings the song “Renegade,” which is a fine song that fits well within the album; the only problem is that she’s Taylor Swift. As SoDak has noted, she is more of a capitalist than a musician. So, even in this strange sequence of songs, she sticks out by her very presence. I initially experienced this album as an odd amalgamation of voices and sounds for which I had no name or place. I had no idea who these people were. It’s like having Michael Jackson at a birthday party. Even if he doesn’t do anything weird; he kind of ruins it by being there. It just fucks with the album a bit. Swift also sings background on the song “Birch,” and it is beautiful. She is a great accompaniment. As I said, I do like the song she sings, but it makes the album less mysterious because of her presence. It should be on her own album, but in the end, it would probably be strange if it were missing now that I have internalized the record as a whole.

Overall, this album is a strange, emotional, sonically psychedelic dream made up of various flashes and vignettes. It is filled with the reoccurring themes of familial and brotherly love, family dynamics, mental health struggles, and emotional loss and pain. However, it leaves one feeling resilient and slightly uplifted, as it has an overall healing quality. It is also a one-of-a-kind album that will never be replicated, as the band is primarily Vernon and Dresner. This particular make up of guest artists is reflective of this moment in history. It’s just another thing that makes this record unique and special. It’s both familiar and new sounding. I absolutely fell in love with it. I often treat it as medicine.

Due to this record I have also become a big fan of Mitchell and Pecknold. I have no plan to dive into Vernon’s body of work despite how much I like what he does on How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? I first listened to this album with knowing little about the people who made it or play on it. I kind of want to keep it that way. I’ll check out the next Big Red Machine album, and maybe the first one. I’ll also keep my eye on Dresner. He is the sound of weakness straightening its back. How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? spoke volumes to me this last year. I still love it dearly. I’m sure I always will.