You can’t help but feeling Peter Garrett reckons he made the wrong choice when he quit music for a career in politics. While Garrett’s political star began falling almost before it rose, the talented rump of Midnight Oil – the mad scientist (and architect) Jim Moginie, drummer Rob Hirst and Martin Rotsey – have managed to throw off the shackles of political agitation and, through The Break, rediscover the surf sounds that inspired them originally way back in the early 70s.
Whereas The Break’s first album, Church Of The Open Sky, drew a direct line to The Atlantics, the follow-up album, Space Farm, is more of an eclectic psychedelic creature. Space Farm is bookended by some chanting from The Gyuto Monks of Tibet (and presumably courtesy of Brian Ritchie); it’s symbolic, though of what is open to conjecture.
From there The Break explores the psychedelic edges of the surf genre. The title track is all thumping tom attack and wired melody; Day 300 is Ennio Morricone on a journey of self-discovery on the northern beaches of Sydney. Face the Music conveys a discipline anathema to the average surfer’s laissez-faire philosophy, Tumbling For Eons Through Turbid Atoms defies its pretentious title to create a sugar-sweet post-pop psychedelic trip and Majestic Kelp takes you out on the glassy waters and exposes you to the tranquil beauty of nature. Whatever Dumb Courage is the proverbial reflective morning after the previous night’s dangerous beach-side exuberance; Time For Flying is a free-wheeling fall through space. The paradox of Things Are Loud Here is its sparse focus, like a microphone trained on the microcosms of the natural world, Rotor is the glorious Spanish end to an evening of excitement in Bondi, and the romance of Sky, I Use You For a Mirror is so palpable it’s got its tongue down your throat before you’ve had a chance to introduce yourself.
But the strangest moment on Space Farm comes with Ten Guitars, a slick lounge track featuring the vocal talents of Engelbert Humperdinck. While Humperdinck remains subject of occasional ridicule, he was more popular than Jimi Hendrix – whatever that means. Yet The Break don’t care about being cool, or any of that cheap reputational stuff. They’re in it for the music, and that music is pretty damn good.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Space Farm
If You Like These, You’ll like this: TAMAN SHUD, DICK DALE, THE ATLANTICS
In A Word: Surf’’n’Space.
