Midnight Oil: Capricornia

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * )

Yes, they are still going. Even after the 1997 greatest hits compilation, the acoustic live collection, the tribute album and their previous studio album, 98's Redneck Wonderland, on which they melded a contemporary studio edge to brash sub-metal songs which recalled their early pub-wrecking days of 25 years ago.

Though for us the biggest reminder that Peter Garrett and co were still around came at the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony where they came out and played Beds Are Burning while wearing shirts with the pointed motif "Sorry". A nice touch, even if much of the world was split on whether it was Jimmy Barnes or Nikki Webster the bald guy was apologising for.

Anyway, Capricornia is - perhaps in the spirit of U2's All You Can't Leave Behind or R.E.M.'s Reveal - an album as a restating of core values and optimism.

Many of these songs could have come from their world-conquering Diesel and Dust-Blue Sky Mining period, all slashing acoustic guitars and choruses which kick up a big cloud of red sand in their wake.

Some also remind that these 80s eco-warriors, for all of their late-70s Oz-rock beginnings, are musically offspring of the 60s.

Just listen to the Byrdsian 12-string jangle and harmonies of opening Golden Age, the Eight Miles High-like intro of Tone Poem or the surf guitar beginnings of Mosquito March.

Midnight Oil have always been a guitar band and Capricornia's cornucopia (sorry) of fretwork reminds they're still a potent one. But whether even the Oils faithful need Garrett barking another ode to his great outdoors or the Australian psyche is the moot point here.

Still, the tunes are good, their firepower as a band sounds undiminished and that bovine artwork suggests Midnight Oil will roll on until those cows come home.

Label: Columbia