"Missy Higgins and Matt Corby doing This Morning have discovered something that I didn't even know was there.What do you call a stream with no water? A wash? A gulch? An arroyo? People have found the songs, and I wasn't sure how that would work with something like Talkin to a Stranger, admits Seymour. "People have completely reinterpreted the material. That's extended by the tribute versions on Crucible, where a diverse range of artists engage with the varied DNA of The Slab (Betty's Worry), Holy Grail and Do You See What I See? The strength of songwriting in the band's back catalogue is a key reason why their 2014 shows will be more than nostalgia. A second holds the original recordings.Īcross almost two decades Hunters & Collectors evolved from art-rock provocateurs and cold-funk minimalists to a muscular force that provided a chronicle of change in Australia. One way to measure the group's standing is to note the artists who contribute covers to Crucible: Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Neil Finn ( Throw Your Arms Around Me), The Living End ( Say Goodbye), The Avalanches (a remix of Talking to a Stranger) and Missy Higgins and Matt Corby all feature on the first disc. In the past 15 years they have made only a handful of one-off appearances, mainly for benefit gigs such as Sound Relief, the 2009 Victorian bushfire benefit. No one was ever driving it.įew Australian bands have a more storied history than Hunters & Collectors, a group who emerged from Melbourne's inner-city scene at the start of the 1980s and gradually evolved into a titanic live band whose horn-infused, definitive seven-piece line-up became one of the country's premier concert attractions. The analogy I always drew was that Hunnas was like this big machine.
You've got to relax with it you can't question it, because it's just this forward pressure that keeps pushing all the time. Each time we've come together, it's fallen into place quickly without a struggle. Was there a moment when you found that sound again? No one's desperate for the band to go back on the road.ĭempsey: Hunters & Collectors have such an identifiable sound because of your voice and a rhythm section that is like a freight train. Most of the guys have full-time jobs now, so there's a different mentality now. We pretty much all have kids, so we don't sweat the small stuff any more. Seymour: It's hard to say, as everyone is really polite. We're not trying to rekindle the idea of some creative overlay because, personally, I think that's fraught with danger.ĭempsey: You stopped touring in 1998 and that's when we started touring heavily. We're not trying to reinvent ourselves creatively and that's important. There's no creative pressure - we're just doing a retrospective tour. With this record, especially in the last week, I've realised there's a real awareness of those songs.ĭempsey: How does the rest of the band feel about getting back on the road? You can't tell what's happening on a national level, but you can see who's there in the pub watching you. You develop a strong relationship and you become very respectful of whoever is there. Seymour: You become very close to whoever comes. We were relatively popular, as a lot of people would go and see the band, but radio wouldn't play it at the time.ĭempsey: We always admired bands like Hunters & Collectors and REM who built their audiences through touring and the special bond that built. We didn't have any choice, so we just kept playing in pubs, so I was surprised that record ended up doing as well as it did. I didn't think anyone would hear it because Triple J had stopped playing us and Triple M hadn't started. Seymour: That record didn't get any radio airplay anywhere. Built a legacy through touring: Mark Seymour.
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