Midnight Oil: Power Up.

Capricornia is in stores now.

Midnight Oil are nothing short of an Australian musical institution. After 25 years their albums have come to represent much of Australia’s musical social identity, finding common ground between both white and indigenous Australia. They’ve taken political stances on issues as diverse as the end to uranium mining in Kakadu to the need for reconciliation with the injustices of our nations past. Even attending your first Midnight Oil gig is practically a rite of passage.

Based on a novel by Xavier Herbet detailing the settlement of northern Australia, Capricornia marks Midnight Oil’s 14th full-length studio release as well as a return to a sound long time fans of the band may be more familiar with. After the bombast, distortion and heavy synth sounds of 1998’s Redneck Wonderland, Capricornia finds itself in the hands of producer Warne Livesey, who previously manned the desk for the recording of Diesel & Dust and Blue Sky Mining.

“At times you can try and push the envelope and with Redneck we tried to do something different,” bassist Bones explains. “It was a difficult record to play, lost of sequencing and lots of distortion. After that record and tour I got rid of every distortion pedal I’ve ever had,” he laughs. “I don’t miss them at all. Overdose of distortion. We put a lot of time into trying to sound different, but as soon as Pete starts singing, it sounds like us. I’m sure a lot of bands try that; go for a radical transformation and then when you play it to someone they say, yeah, that’s you guys.”

“We did put done some heavy guidelines for this record. Things like if you can’t sing something and play at the same time you don’t do it, instead of having three tracks of backing vocals and then trying to decide which one to sing live. It’s a very natural record. It’s what the bands actually sounds like.”

While the record sounds like the band are very comfortable being themselves, there was certainly no time spared in the studio, the recording being put together at near breakneck speed.

“It was quite hectic. There wasn’t a lot of time wasted. We’d done demos and played some of the songs live. When we got in there and started rolling the tape it wasn’t so indecisive. You can get in and go, maybe we should ad something here or change they key and you’re sitting in an environment wasting thousands of dollars. So we did all that first. It just flowed.”

“Redneck we were still farting around and writing some of the stuff. Some songs can be quite simple while others are more of a challenge, and this record we kind of left out the songs that would be difficult. This is the quickest record we’ve ever made. It was all done in six weeks. Things can go on too long and by the end you’re just smashing you head against a wall going ‘fucking stop!’ We just went this is the deadline, it has to be finished by then.”

Last year saw the release of The Power & The Passion: A Tribute To Midnight Oil, as the name suggests, a tribute album featuring renderings of some of The Oils finest moments by some of the cream of Australia’s current crop of performers.

“Hat’s off to all of them, but what a hard thing to do,” Bones muses. “We’ve done a few songs over the years that have gone on tribute albums for other people like that. We agree to do them, but when it actually comes time to record it can be a hard thing to get over. The Gurge (Stand In Line) did a total reworking, but Something For Kate (Dreamworld) kept pretty true to the original. I really like what Regurgitator did.”

Perhaps the only way to repay the compliment would be for Midnight Oil to put out an album covering tracks from the bands who’ve covered theirs… Bones laughs.

“We’ll load their gear in for the one day. You know I still don’t have a copy of the album yet.”

A problem that seems to be recurring…

“I still haven’t got a copy of Capricornia either,” Bones laughs. “To this day I do not have a final version with artwork, but they keep telling me today, today.”

Since the completion of the album back in August, Midnight Oil has been on the road in the US.

“We’re just doing a couple of Sydney and Melbourne shows before heading back to America until May. We just got a new deal with a company in the States. It’s good. There’s all these new faces and they’re very enthusiastic and it’s very enjoyable. Towards the end our label over there just wasn’t interested in doing anything with us. It was like someone slowly letting the water out of a bath. It shouldn’t be like that, but it’s just about economics.”