For some, the sight of a reformed Midnight Oil at Sound Relief might have served as an unpleasant reminder of the hectoring call from drummer Rob Hirst at the band’s ARIA induction a few years back. Hirst, visibly pissed off, asked the audience why Australia had such an absence of protest songs at a time of global crisis (then, the invasion of Iraq).

If Hirst bothers hunting down St Helens’ debut LP Heavy Profession, he’ll probably be surprised – and for all the right reasons. Somewhat unexpectedly, and perhaps inadvertently, St Helens have made a great record protesting the ills of a world gone wrong.

It’s a surprisingly disconcerting first listen. Exhibit A is the opening gastroenteric burble of drums, bass and percussion that suggests the speedy kicks of Jarrod Quarrell’s old band New Season won’t be far away. Instead, opener ‘Don’t Laugh’ slips into a druggy bump’n’grind suspended by chiming guitars before wrong-footing into a declamatory, upbeat chorus. It’s compelling simply because of the collision of its arrangement.

From there, the band roughly pick from genres, executing everything from dub (‘How to Choose Your Guru Pt 2’) to maudlin, narcotic country (‘St Luke’) with finesse. Throughout the record, songs punch through with spectacular ideas and disappear (check the guitar solo that hits just before ‘How To Choose … ’ then abruptly dissipates, or the staccato pogo that summons the exit for the title track). Other tracks linger, eerie in their total stasis (‘The Only Ghost In the Room’). Karl Scullin, Melbourne’s elfin indie darling, makes notable contributions here. His characteristic spindly guitar parts burnish background colour. In ‘Get Up’, they act as a catalysing force for the band to rally around. In a live context he’ll surely be missed.

‘Coffin Scratch’ is the song I can’t move past on a record of great moments. It’s a paean to getting your kicks at home that starts with what sounds like the bastard child of the opening riff of the ‘Streets of Your Town’. It then marches into sinister verses directed by a sly, sliding, new wave guitar riff before lurching back to awkward pop for the choruses. The last minute-and-a-half creeps towards an ultimately overwhelming crescendo: keys burst into technicolour flourishes, Quarrell and Hannah Brooks’ joint vocal steps up a slightly more frantic notch and the bass punches loudly to the point of almost destabilising the whole thing. It’s the type of song that makes you jump from the couch and hit repeat on first listen.

All through the record, Brooks and Quarrell share joint, mimicking vocal duties. It’s a gambit that doesn’t entirely pay off. Brooks, in particular, fails to distinguish herself from the role of spectral backing, echoing Quarrell’s faintly disgusted spectator at every turn. And yet, if they sound so uncomfortably numb at the stupefying rubbish of modern life, that success is due to her eerie ghosting and Quarrell’s ability to hang back. Too much vinegar and he might come off all tart Julian Casablancas, rather than a world-weary, sardonic Stuart Staples.

What makes Heavy Profession so repeatedly engaging is the context the band situate themselves in. On paper, the record is an awkward melange of dub, noise and oblique pop elements but it becomes a unified document because of its splenetic musings on the marginalised. “The New Age got rich off the past,” sing Brooks/Quarrell on the dubby downer ‘Pharoahs Tomb’, “and what was left got split by the museums.” Heavy Profession sounds like it was born of the decades when easy money flowed with reckless abandon to those who qualified. The protagonists of St Helens’ godless narratives, on the other hand – the ones holding onto “one more try and then I’m gonna give it up” – are the detritus. And we all know what happens to them.

In a world of bloated credit and diminished confidence, St Helens are completely vital; so far from sub-prime. Memo to Rob Hirst: you got your wish – even if it’s not what you expected.

by JP Hammond