Church Of The Open Sky

Midnight Oil’s creative core have reconvened in new surf rock project The Break, writes RENÉ SCHAEFER.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] In 1980 Midnight Oil released the classic Bird Noises mini-album. The closing track was the surf instrumental ‘Wedding Cake Island’, named after a rocky outcrop near Coogee Beach in the Oils’ native Sydney. The track became a favourite among fans for its blend of surf guitar and haunting atmospherics. Sadly, it was a direction the band never followed up on, as the public’s attention increasingly focused on its extroverted frontman Peter Garrett.

Surf music never ceased to inform the songwriting of Midnight Oil’s creative core of drummer Rob Hirst and guitarists Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey. It was there in Hirst’s rumbling drum beat and in the twangy, reverbed guitar sound favoured by Moginie in his always memorable lead lines. It made sense coming from a band that grew up on Sydney’s northern beaches, whether they were writing about the dead heart of central Australia or global politics.

Since Garrett’s decision to leave The Oils to concentrate on his political career in 2002, his former cohorts have all been busy with various musical and non-musical projects. Hirst has written a book about the final Oils tour of the US and Canada, notable for its refusal to directly address the strained relationship between Garrett and the rest of the band.

“The Break don’t deal in puritan authenticity, but blend the traditional surf trademarks with occasional excursions into electronic sounds.”

In March 2009, the band reunited for only the second time since their split, for the Sound Relief concert to aid the victims of the Victorian bushfires and the Queensland floods. While this was only ever going to be a one-off, it rekindled the old creative flame in the musicians and plans were laid for a new band. Former bass player Bones Hillman had moved overseas, so they called up their old friend Brian Ritchie of The Violent Femmes, now living in Australia.

Mucking around in the rehearsal room and jamming on some old surf riffs led to the idea of expanding on the sound of ‘Wedding Cake Island’. For one thing, it eliminated the need for vocals, and hence any unfavourable comparisons to The Oils from fans or critics.

The surf rock idiom also implies that The Break is a party band, rather than one burdened by its history or the expectations of die-hard Oils fans, who can be a fairly recalcitrant mob. Musically, the blueprint of ‘Wedding Cake Island’ has been beefed up. The Break don’t deal in puritan authenticity, but blend the traditional surf trademarks with occasional excursions into electronic sounds, such as on ‘Phobos-Grunt’. In a way, this is exactly where the pioneers of the surf aesthetic were heading in the early 1960s before they were superceded by the British Invasion bands.

Other songs like ‘Mystics’ introduce laid-back atmospherics, another element that was often overshadowed by histrionics in Midnight Oil. The stars of the show are undoubtedly Moginie and Rotsey’s guitars though. The way they interact and play off each other speaks of the players’ long symbiotic history and their masterful control of the instruments’ tones. For the most part, Hirst keeps the drumming pretty straight-up, but when he does cut loose, as on ‘Massacres’, it’s a pure joy to behold. Meanwhile, Ritchie brings a slightly trashy garage element to proceedings, which works a treat. The buzz of his strings is often quite audible, which gives his playing a great lo-fi vibe, entirely appropriate to the songs.

Fans of the surf rock sound of Dick Dale, The Surfaris or The Atlantics have found a new place to worship in Church Of The Open Sky.

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Church Of The Open Sky is out now through Bombora Records.