Did Midnight Oil peak with Blue Sky Mining?

There have been three Midnight Oil “peaks” for me: Head Injuries, 10, 9, 8 and Diesel & Dust. The three runners-up are the noisy debut, Red Sails and Blue Sky Mining.

 

Capricornia was a huge comeback.. Luritja Way is a classic.

 

I am Australian, grew up in the 80's. I love 10,9,8, but Red sails is the better album IMO. YMMV.

 

Debut to Red Sails with 10 to 1 the best.

 

I have the place without a postcode demo's on a tape somewhere

 

Place Without A Postcard, 10 to 1, and Red Sails are my absolute favorites, but I really like Redneck Wonderland quite a bit too. Great songs throughout their whole catalog though.

 

Interestingly Red Sails is the album that least does it for me from that era. To my ears it is over produced and over wrought. While it has some very good songs it also has some real clangers; "Sleep" anybody?
It comes perlilously close to being a caricature of a Midnight Oil album. That's just my take.

 

I sense over-production on Red Sails also - the excellent Species Deceases and classic Diesel and Dust were likely reactions against the high amount of studio wizardry on RS.

 

I just listened to Red Sails for the first time in a while - the material isn’t consistently good and the recorded sound (US LP) is not a good listen. It is bookended however by their best two albums.

 

I listened to Species Deceases a couple of months ago and boy does that EP rock. That there was a blistering set of songs. I'd forgotten just how good it was.

 

in a commercial sense yes
musically no