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MUSIC
Peter Garrett & The Alter Egos
Factory Theatre, March 16
Reviewed by MICHAEL BAILEY
★★★★
He might have been fronting a band called The Alter Egos but Peter Garrett was, on this night, still the passionate activist performer we came to know across six decades in Midnight Oil.
Nobody would have begrudged the 70-year-old a rest after the Oils’ epic final lap of Australia in 2022. Instead, Garrett is back with a new solo album and fire in his belly, stoked by having another quarter of Midnight Oil to his left, in the fret-finessing form of guitarist Martin Rotsey, plus his daughters Grace and May on backing vocals.
Peter Garrett’s career spans six decades, and the Midnight Oil frontman is back for a solo encore.Credit: Wolter Peeters
That said, things took a little while to warm up, as the new record, The True North, was played almost in its entirety. The title track, a statement of Garrett’s abiding commitment to the First Nations cause, got a heartfelt but uncharacteristically stationary performance from the gangly frontman. A plodding way to open the show.
Then the four-piece band launched into the sprightly blues of Innocence and Garrett’s energy increased, adding blasts of harmonica between snarls at rampant Rich Listers, his limbs flailing as if beholden to a particularly angry puppeteer. Still, the septuagenarian was cannily pacing himself, not quite screaming the line “tax-dodgers smash the rough sleepers on their way” like he does so memorably on the album.
Garrett let the songs do most of the political talking this night, although he couldn’t help a rueful aside on the failed Voice referendum: “Six million of us on the right side of history.”
The other pick of the new material was Meltdown, an end-times dirge given an intense performance by Garrett, with funereal keyboards from The Jezabels’ Heather Shannon adding to the galvanising impact.
Inevitably, the room lifted as the set list entered more familiar terrain. Surfing with a Spoon from the Oils’ first album was an unexpected delight, Rotsey unfurling lines of lyrical guitar, Garrett’s telepathy with his “musical brother” a joy to watch.
Beds Are Burning was transformed into a sweeping rock epic, with Shannon’s piano prominent, then the years fell away for traditional treatments of Dreamworld and The Dead Heart.