Capricornia by Midnight Oil
After the hard rock/industrial electronic sounds of the previous album Redneck Wonderland, on this record Midnight Oil moved to a stripped back sound, with acoustic and clean electric guitars dominating the sound of the album (Golden Age, Luritja Way, Under the Overpass), although some tracks (Too Much Sunshine, Mosquito March, Poets and Slaves) feature significant distorted guitars. These latter tracks also feature distorted vocals. The album also features a short piano solo track (A Crocodile Cries) in the middle of the record, the melody of which is reprised for the album closing Poets and Slaves. The album was produced, mixed and arranged by Warne Livesey, who also worked on Midnight Oil's seminal Diesel and Dust and Blue Sky Mining records. The bonus track Say Your Prayers, which appears on US versions of the album and was one of the four new tracks on The Real Thing, was produced by the band and Daniel Denholm.
Plans often change, and that was certainly the case for Midnight Oil in 2002 with <i>Capricornia</i>, a record that appeared to be their last until the 2020 release of <i>The Makarrata Project</i>. The band had originally intended to create an epic rock opera inspired by author Xavier Herbert’s 1938 classic <i>Capricornia</i>. However, the project gradually morphed into an album that, while still influenced by the novel’s examination of Australia’s colonial history, is one of the most intimate entries in their entire catalogue. On tunes like “Golden Age”, the title track and “Under the Overpass”, the group embrace a decidedly acoustic iteration of jangly alt-rock, with singer Peter Garrett eschewing defiant slogans for ruminative storytelling. When Midnight Oil do crank their amps back up (as on the careening “Mosquito March”), their trademark toughness is tempered with the kind of hard-earned insight reserved for political artists with years of activism and struggle under their belts.
