Midnight Oil Head Injuries

Flip through any vintage record collection in Australia, and it’s odds-on that Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett will be there screaming at you from the cover of 1979’s Head Injuries. The Sydney band’s second album saw them bottling the aggressive energy of their live shows—a cry of outrage born in the nation’s then-conservative political climate. Opener “Cold Cold Change” sets the pace, summing up the eternal two-steps-forward, one-step-back of societal progress. “Koala Sprint” captures the dull pain of interstate travel with an undercurrent of environmental concern, and “Stand In Line” sneers dismissively at the sheeplike status quo. Meanwhile, the band’s spontaneous pub rock packs high-impact flashes of punk while retaining tight runs of beer-soaked boogie and foregrounding Garrett’s especially animated delivery. Later releases would sharpen the Oils’ rhetorical knives, but this is where these angry young men found their collective voice.