Almanac Music – Aussie Album Review: Hunters and Collectors “Human Frailty”

 

 

 

Human Frailty

Hunters and Collectors (1986)

 

Forty years? Can it really be forty years since this belter of a record first appeared on the Australian musical landscape? I loved it from the moment I purchased it on vinyl and played it, later acquiring the cd when I was given a cd player for my 21^st birthday. And after four decades, its freshness is a testament to its excellence. Production-wise and musically, there is not an ounce of fat or anything bloated about “Human Frailty”. It is one the great albums of Australian music.

“Human Frailty” is the sound of band reaching full maturity, graduating from their arty post-punk roots into something more substantial. Mark Seymour’s lyrics, sharp and biting, still read as though they might have been written just yesterday. On ‘Say Goodbye’ he inverts the traditional male/female relationship roles (And she ground her finger into my breastbone/ And she said, she said ‘You don’t make me feel like I’m a woman anymore…’) and on other tracks he tackles love and lust, but not in a traditional rock’n’roll sense. For example, on ‘Everything’s On Fire’ the picture he paints, after “trying to find the keyhole in the dark”, is extraordinarily vivid, almost whispering So to all you feelers and fumblers/ Waiting for the fireworks to start/ Do it now – blow it up yourself/ Unbutton the butcher in your heart.

The clarity of Seymour’s observations of domesticity are timeless, such as on ‘The Finger’ (With the bar heater broken/ And the stale chips in the oven/ And the fly there on the table), and ‘Relief’ (Down there beneath the dishes/ Where the knives lie crossed and waiting). Then there is the glorious sadness of a relationship ending in the beautiful ‘This Morning’ (And storm water’s weeping on my bedroom window). The tracks on this record have aged as well as any music produced in 1986. ‘Say Goodbye’ is still vital, ‘Dog’ retains a dirty, funky groove, ‘Everything’s On Fire’ as catchy as all hell, and ‘Throw your Arms Around Me’ continues to be burnt into the brain of music-loving Australians of any age. And the sole cover, Ian Rilen’s ‘Stuck On You’, fits perfectly into the running order.

Of course, it is on this album that the horn section of Jack Howard (trumpet), Michael Waters (trombone), and Jeremy Smith (French horn) really came into their own, powerful and instinctive without being overbearing. Tracks such as ‘Relief’ and ‘The Finger’ just wouldn’t work as well as they do without the beautifully positioned brass to complement the anguish of Seymour’s vocals.

For me, it is the rhythm section of Doug Falconer and John Archer who relentlessly drive these tracks forward. The latter’s bass is at the forefront of nearly every track on the album:  at once subtle and compelling on ‘This Morning’, full of funk on ‘Dog’, understated on the anthemic ‘Throw Your Arms Around Me’, and relentless on ‘Say Goodbye’. It is a true tour de force of bass-playing, the likes of which have rarely been heard before or since on an Australian rock album.

Around the time of the release of “Human Frailty”, I saw the “Hunnas” for the first time at the late, lamented Old Greek Theatre in Richmond. It was a hot, sweaty, incendiary, unforgettable experience: a band that had done the hard yards of pubs and clubs, very much on the ascendancy, playing to an adoring home-town crowd. Gigs don’t get much better.

It beggars belief that an album of this vintage still sounds as fresh, raw, and visceral as it did back in 1986. But it does. And how!