Peter Garrett review: Musically intrepid and lyrically striking, The True North is a joy
On 'The True North', Peter Garrett maintains the rage with the finesse of an artist who's lost none of his power or his passion.
At a glance
Peter Garrett's second solo album The True North drops this week
Though he doesn't reference Midnight Oil directly, the band's spectre looms in several lines
With adventurous arrangements and potent lyrics, it punctures self-doubt with unquenchable hope
When Midnight Oil were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, Bono said: “You can break up a band, but you can’t break up an idea. If Midnight Oil could mean any one idea, it would have to be that Australia could be more for more people, and that the only obstacle to that is indifference.”
Fifteen years after the band broke up, and following Peter Garrett’s nine years in federal parliament, Midnight Oil reformed for several triumphant tours and two remarkable records. And then they called time on their touring. But Garrett has got more to say. “Time is on the move,” he acknowledges in Human Playground, one of the many standout tracks on his second solo album, “a hungry beast, there’s much to do.”
Garrett makes no direct references to his old band on the new record, but they perhaps loom large in several lines. “You can feed on wishful thinking for only so long,” he states in Paddo. “Winning streaks end the same way, and they sing the same song.” Garrett is “alone” in Permaglow, “nobody sticking like glue… no one to laugh at your jokes”. In Currowan, “our memories bind and anchor us”, but Human Playground asserts that “footprints of the past become the start of something new; it’s a beautiful path.”
Musically, The True North is Garrett at his most adventurous. Paddo is a compelling slice of Aussie hip-hop, Innocence Part 2 is a stirring spoken word piece, Hey Archetype is classic rock ’n’ roll, while Permaglow and Human Playground find him at his most melodic.
Lyrically, Garrett still possesses that ripping Aussie turn of phrase – in Hey Archetype, he manages to rhyme “she’s a catfish-clawing mangler” with “finagler”. It’s a joy.
Though, overall, The True North is a deeply unsettling listening experience. It’s an album torn between hope and despair. “It’s never too late,” Garrett states in Innocence Parts 1 & 2, but “the only constant is inequality”. In Meltdown, the singer has “got a ringside seat for the final countdown” but remains defiant: “I won’t succumb to the grief”. Caught between the darkness and the dawn, the album ends on an ominous note: “The undertaker has started to dance.”
However, Garrett is not yet ready to concede defeat to the “right wing clowns”, the climate criminals, the planet haters and their promoters in the Murdoch media. As he sings, “Everybody’s got to make time when they’re called.”
No Australian rock star has done more for the planet. In his autobiography, Garrett recounted a 2010 encounter with Lou Reed, who asked what he’d been up to. When Garrett mentioned his political career, Reed replied, “Amazing. You’re actually in the government?” But in Everybody, the final track here, the artist is wracked by self-doubt. “I find myself asking, ‘Could I have done more?’ I find myself asking, ‘Should I have done more?’”
But Peter Garrett is still putting his hand up. “I still feel the wild inside,” he declares in Human Playground. As Bono remarked, “The Midnight Oil idea is still present, still contagious, still a virus you don’t want to shake off. It’s like they were born from Whitlam’s phrase, ‘Maintain your rage.’”
The True North crackles with the vitality of an artist who’s lost none of his power and passion. Still “speaking my truth any way I can,” long may he rage.
This will definitely be one of the albums of the year.
The True North by Peter Garrett drops via Sony.
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