Midnight Oil have announced they’ll be launching their new album, tentatively titled Show of Hands, with their headline appearance at Bluesfest in October. The Australian rock legends are set to perform on the first night of the rescheduled festival on Friday, 1st October.
The new songs were recorded at the same time as 2020’s The Makarrata Project, which saw them collaborate with First Nations artists including Gurrumul, Dan Sultan, Kev Carmody and Alice Skye in an effort to elevate the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The band went on to tour the record alongside many of those collaborators.
According to the band, the new album “explores different territory” to the topics touched on with The Makarrata Project. Presuming it’s a less collaborative affair than The Makarrata Project, the new album will also be the first all-Oils record from the band since 2002’s Capricornia.
It will also likely mark the last studio album recorded with the band’s longtime bassist Bones Hillman, who died last year, aged 62.
The rescheduled Bluesfest will run from Friday, 1st October to Monday, 4th October. Midnight Oil were announced alongside Paul Kelly as new additions to the lineup last month, when organisers unveiled new dates following the festival’s eleventh-hour cancellation earlier this year.
