Melbourne alternative rockers Hunters & Collectors managed to stick around longer than expected, having formed in 1980 and going through myriad line-up changes before finally disbanding in 1998. The recording sessions for the band's first three albums were turbulent enough times, but they persevered, moving admirably from art-rock post-punk disco a la Gang of Four and down a path of more melodic, more incisive rock & roll that kept the band successful in their native land whilst, inevitably, failing to make much of a dent on our shores. Just recently, what is perhaps the band's milestone recording, 1986's Human Frailty, was reissued by Liberation Blue in Australia as a deluxe CD/DVD package, a marketing ploy usually deserved for only the most recognizable of superstars. Hunters & Collectors were like the little pub band that could, and they just so happened to write two of the best alt rock tracks of the mid-1980s and place them at the start of said record.

Say Goodbye is quite simply a juggernaut, from the thickness in John Archer's bass riff to the propulsion in Doug Falconer's drums to the slashing of singer/lyricist Mark Seymour's guitar. The Hunters were a band that could employ a three-piece horn section and pull of the trick of actually making them mold naturally into the music. Nothing was clumsy about the group, especially at this point in time, when the six-piece outfit were proving to be a particularly confident band. The rhythm section of Archer and Falconer alone remain one of the most underrated in alternative rock history, as they end up anchoring a lot of the melodic touches throughout the various songs collected on NATURAL SELECTION.

Throw Your Arms Around Me is likely their most well-known song, even if you haven't heard the band's inaugural 1985 version, which is a masterpiece of multi-layered harmony vocals and evocative melodic guitar. Pearl Jam and Crowded House, which features Mark Seymour's brother Nick, have covered this song in their live shows regularly. It is regularly overlooked whenever people think of the best love songs in contemporary music, although people gladly cling to ambiguously creepy, time-tested tracks like "Happy Together" and "Every Breath You Take" as genuine songs about true love. "And we will never meet again/So shed your skin and let's get started," should come off as a bit too forceful a come-on for a chorus to be built upon, but surrounded by some of the most genuine statements of rapture ever contributed to a presumably hyper-masculine group of Aussies ("So if you disappear out of view/You know I will never say goodbye/And though I try and forget it/You will make me call your name/And I'll shout it to the blue summer sky"), it's a true emotional release. And the band's delicate ballad arrangement doesn't take away from the concise nature of the group's playing.

The version of that song included here is a largely acoustic and crowd-rousing version taken from the Under One Roof live album, the band's last recording before their split. The sound of a crowd full of clapping hands never had this much presence on a record I've heard in a long time. Seymour's vocal prowess on both versions of this song, as well as on the volatile domestic drama of "Say Goodbye," are convincingly passionate and natural at the same time. "Say Goodbye," in particular, managed to inspire a room full of drunken males to sing the line "You don't make me feel like a woman anymore."

Talking to a Stranger, the band's first memorable single from 1982, is presented in its extended seven-minute form, which draws attention to the frenetic, hyperactive layers of instrumentation that charge the song. The lineup here was short-lived, with guitarist Ray Tosti-Guerra, keyboardist Geoff Crosby and percussionist Jack Perano augmenting Seymour, Falconer, Archer and the three mainstays from the Horns of Contempt section, trombonist Michael Waters, French horn player Jeremy Smith and trumpeter Jack Howard. It shows the band playing a considerably avant garde, post-apocalyptic, stream-of-consciousness type of driving industrial dance track, and it perseveres as the most unified, intense artifact from that stage in the band's career, when they were living up to their influences ("Hunters & Collectors" is the name of a song by the legendary Kraut band Can).

Crosby still played with the band around the time of their 1984 release The Jaws of Life, represented here by the grinding, dirty pub anthem The Slab (Or Betty's Worry) and the equally boozy, chiming melancholy of Carry Me. Seymour injects a great deal of cackling humor in the former song that keeps the song loose-limbed and catchy, whilst toning down the fanatical lust for something more brutal in the boasts of the latter ("And sometimes I'll go over/Over the bar I'll go/Sometimes the pole is only one inch short").

These two songs as well as the trio of tracks pulled from Human Frailty show the band coming into their own. "Say Goodbye" proudly emasculates the proud male sexual beast of "The Slab" with one finger in his breastbone and the other in his face. Everything's on Fire (a pyromaniac's love song, literally) is also a deeply internal track concerning jealousy and homicidal instincts, wherein Seymour's sinister voice intones the listener to "unbutton the butcher in your heart" The brass arrangements also figure prominently in the grooves on all three songs, and they add a particular menace to this song's mid-tempo lurch. Is There Anybody in There? turns the venom outward and deals with the media-fed images of war and dissent. As Mark Seymour in his track-by-track annotations regarding this song in particular: "Television is evil. Like alcohol and penicillin, it can be beneficial if taken in moderation, but it is always lethal in large doses...It is the purveyor of lies and deceit in every family home, and the poor victims of its toxic messages are hypnotised by the elegance of its pictures."

Seymour offers a particularly daunting anecdote about the band's attempt to cross over in the U.S. via I.R.S. Records around 1987. The hooky, "Like a Rolling Stone"-styled Back on the Breadline was recorded because the label balked at the lack of a decent single on the group's What's a Few Men? LP, which was reconfigured and released in the States as "Fate." As it stands, it packs all the ingredients of the sort of hyper-passionate anthem that should've been big at a time when U2, The Alarm and Midnight Oil were all having successful modern rock singles on American shores. The charged Do You See What I See?, in particular, reminds me of the Oils' later single "Forgotten Years," so it's kind of easy to chalk up the failure of an American crossover to the record label.

When the River Runs Dry and Blindeye improve upon the latter two singles with the addition of guitarist Barry Palmer and producer Clive Martin. The former rails against complacency, capitalism and exploitation with the sort of vigor that is reminiscent of the American group Live‘s early sound on Mental Jewelry. Blindeye follows a similar vein, feeling more like a tightened-up version of "Back on the Breadline."

Cut, considered the band's most successful album, found the group taking their sound even further into the mainstream with the production work of Don Gehman. Six tracks on that album alone broke into the Australian Top 100 singles chart, and the album received double platinum status there as well. True Tears of Joy is a shimmering, astounding pop song that has a particularly bluesy influence, especially in the fluid playing of Barry Palmer on lead guitar. The piano melody that opens and bridges Where Do You Go? is also quite an odd touch for the group, but the song dutifully kicks into a full-cylinder stomp with a hell of a chorus and some astoundingly spiteful lyrics ("I wish I could scream like a baby/I wish I could cry out and be saved/I wish I was grateful and my conscience was clear/So then I could dance on your grave"). Holy Grail would become to Australia what New Order's "World in Motion" is to England: an instantly recognizable anthem for the soccer crowd. Seymour, however, doesn't exactly play to the idea of blind nationalism, instead reconfiguring the song's lyrics as a nightmare vision of rape and pillage and, eventually, death. There's also a little humor, as well: Holy Grail is also the nickname for the "rock ‘n' roll carrot" that, as Seymour himself says, "dangles before the collective nose of every band who's ever walked the earth."

The last remaining song on the set, Back in the Hole, is from the 1994 record Demon Flower. Sadly, the set excludes "True Believers," a single from the group's last studio album, 1997's Juggernaut. The first minute of "Back in the Hole" features Mark Seymour's vocals at their most restrained and deep but equally bracing in a folk-styled electric guitar arrangement that utilizes loud-soft dynamics to give it a contemporary edge, even as Seymour's lyrical preoccupations with human frailty, this time in the case of a prison warden concerned about his job and his livelihood, still cut through.

NATURAL SELECTION is the most comprehensive and consistent Hunters & Collectors compilation available, and delivers an astounding 15-track breakdown of how this band managed to keep their "Head Above Water" (to borrow a song title) and become Australian rock icons. On July 14, 2005, the group was inducted into the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame) alongside The Easybeats and Split Enz, and both Mark Seymour and Jack Howard have managed to pursue solo careers after the band's split. They still pack a unique punch 10 years after their disintegration, and NATURAL SELECTION is a must-have for fans of Australian rock royalty such as INXS or Icehouse.

TRACK LISTING
1. Talking to a Stranger (1982)
2. Carry Me (1984)
3. The Slab (Or Betty's Worry) (1984)
4. Say Goodbye (1986)
5. Everything's on Fire (1986)
6. Is There Anybody in There? (1986)
7. Back on the Breadline (1988)
8. Do You See What I See? (1987)
9. When the River Runs Dry (1989)
10. Blindeye (1990)
11. True Tears of Joy (1992)
12. Where Do You Go? (1992)
13. Back in the Hole (1994)
14. Holy Grail (1993)
15. Throw Your Arms Around Me (1986/live version: 1998)

For more information on Hunters & Collectors, including media, discography and news on the band's current side projects as well as their history, visit www.humanfrailty.com.au.

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