Lasseter's Gold (Unreleased Demos 1972-1996)

Lasseter's Gold (Unreleased Demos 1972-1996)

After lying dormant for the better part of 15 years, alt-rock legends Midnight Oil teed up their 2017 reunion tour by dropping two mammoth career-spanning box sets: The Full Tank (a storehouse for their entire discography) and The Overflow Tank (a four-CD excavation of rarities). Lassetter’s Gold initially appeared as part of the latter package, unearthing a batch of demos that reaches all the way back to the Oils’ early-’70s infancy, when they were known first as Schwampy Moose (represented here by the opening lo-fi pub-rock grunt bearing their name) and then as Farm (laying down this collection’s hiss-covered ambient interlude). However, many of these castaway songs could hold their own within Midnight Oil’s official canon: “Ghost of the Roadhouse” dates back to the sessions for 1982’s 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 and mainlines the underdog urgency that defined this phase of the group, while the exclusion of the shimmering “The Band Played the Last Melody” from 1990’s chart-topping Blue Sky Mining is ultimately a testament to how much high-quality material the band were producing at the time. Die-hard fans will be especially delighted by the inclusion of “Wreckery Road”, a jangly gem that drummer Rob Hirst repurposed for the 1991 debut by his Oz-rock supergroup, Ghostwriters.

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