Human Frailty
They have built their reputation as a live band but have been slow to inflame
the record-buying public. But with their new album, Human Frailty, the Hunters
and Collectors say they have bridged the gap at last, encasing the raw emotional
power of performance in the sweet shell of multitrack production.
Vocalist/guitarist/lyricist, Mark Seymour explains to Lesley Sly.
The Hunters have been streamlining the detail of their music for a year now.
Everything has been condensed from line-up to lyrics.
Two years ago they were nine piece now they are six. Last year they were firm
advocates of live-to-digital recording; now they've turned out a studio album.
Previous records were described by lyrics abstract and metaphysical; now they
are more graphic and fundamental.
Q. Gavin McKillop seems to have played an important role in mapping out this new
direction. Why did you choose him as producer?
A. We were lucky to get him. We didn't want to work with anyone local. We'd
given Deborah Conway (Do Re Mi, also produced by McKillop) a copy of Jaws of
Life and she gave us a big pitch with him. So he came over, basically as a
tourist, and did the album at the same time.
Q. How much influence did he have on the shape of the album?
A. He did have strong ideas but they were all really musical ones, not related
specifically to technology. He made it very clear from the start that he wanted
to make an organic album, a record based on how we play - both drummers' bands,
with music based on rhythm.
His role became more apparent near the end when we were doing the vocals and
guitars. We'd sit in the studio and work out extra guitar arrangements, and I
spent a lot more time on the vocals than I have on previous records.
Q. Would it have been very different if you (the band) had produced it?
A. We've toyed with the idea but... it takes time for musicians to learn how to
operate a multitrack studio. You have to use someone who understands the
technology.
Q. In 1985 (Sonics interview with John Archer) you were committed to the
live-to-digital recording method. Why did you go over to multitrack for this?
A. We wanted to capture this live ambience of the band, but we also wanted to
make a studio record that would work on commercial radio stations. The power of
the drum sound, the vocals, these were all logical reasons for using multitrack.
Q. What's the recording process?
A. Usually John and Doug and I just play - that's the basic core of our songs.
We record like that as a guide and then do all the guitars again. John did a lot
more with his bass this time post-rhythm-track too, a lot of overdubbing.
Q. Are the songs heavily structured when you go it?
A. They went down pretty much the same as we had planned. About half of the
stuff had been played live and that's where the songs grow and change radically.
Q. You've been quoted as saying, "Our gigs are so intense, we haven't always had
enough detachment to produce vinyl that sells." Do you mean the live intensity
doesn't transmit, that those dynamics become confusing on vinyl?
A. I meant more than our emotional involvement in our music is so tied to
performance. Sometimes we haven't been able to stand back and see what we were
going to get out of the studio and what the limitations are. We've been too
wide-eyed about it (recording). It's possible to take too many risks in a studio
and a lot of good live bands have trouble getting their sound there. This time
we said, 'Right, we're not going to get the live sound so we just have to make a
record that highlights the emotional intensity.'
We wanted then to make a well produced record and not worry about being faithful
to our live sound.
Q. You've said that record sales don't reflect your popularity in Australia.
Why?
A. In order to have a profile in this country you do a lot of live work. The
perception the punter has of a live band isn't the same as seeing one on
Countdown and going out and getting the record. We've had a strong live
following and that hasn't translated into record sales. But that's changing now.
Q. You use the word 'prosaic' frequently to describe the band's new direction.
Are you aiming to be more accessible?
A. The band has reached a musical peak and I thought it was important to strip
the lyrics back, make them more skeletal, more communicative. I've never written
lyrics before on our musical level... I've been off on Cloud Nine, you know,
writing metaphysical poetry.
I've tried to sculpture the lyrics on this album - to be as direct and
commonplace as possible - so that they blend with the music.
Q. There's certainly a sense of harsh reality on this album. I like the way you
mix images like the downtrodden mother at the sink and the "white flag of peace
limp and useless" (in the song Relief).
A. Yeah... they're all domestic because politics begins and ends in the home. I
was also... well, someone in my position can write about world peace with a
certain detachment. But what about someone so embroiled in domestic tasks that
they haven't got time to intellectualise about these things? So, I was bringing
my perception of the world back to that level - the kitchen sink.
Q. You say Human Frailty is the point at which you finally recorded the
emotional and physical power of your music. Why has it taken so long?
A. We've tried to develop out music out of the idiosyncrasies of the musicians
rather than relying on technical ability. We've relied on our character and it's
been a gradual growth. We've been honing those idiosyncrasies down knowing that
we would reach a point where we were making music that didn't sound like
anything else.
It meant that recording was a mysterious process - we weren't sure what was
going to happen. It still is, but we've learned to translate it (the
idiosyncratic sound) better.
Q. What about your Aboriginal funk; reviewers seem constantly to describe you
this way?
A. Americans really wanted to believe that there was some special purity about
Australian bands because 'we're in touch with the earth'. We kept on saying,
'We're just middle-class boys from the suburbs'. I've never had contact with
Aborigines. But, I think there is a strong sense of landscape in our music.
We've never pursued this... I can't stand jingoistic Australian pop bands.
Q. A lot of Australian bands have to live overseas to further their careers...
A. And they end up sounding like English bands... they get that whinge in their
music. The bands that survive here have a different approach, they're more
celebratory and outward-looking. I've been to a lot of countries and I've never
seen anything like the degree of commitment from band or audience as a Midnight
Oil gig.
It's important for us to be recognised as an Australian group.
Q. How do you write songs?
A. I'm always writing lyrics which I take along when they gell into something.
Jack and I are working more closely on arrangements. John and Doug tend to work
out their dynamics separately.
All our songs are based on feel of bass and drums and we just work that out
together. There are some orientated around me (for example, Throw Your Arms
Around Me) but they're not the majority.
Q. Are you a one-take vocalist?
A. No, not on this album. Gavin convinced me I was a singer and we spent a lot
of time on vocals In some songs I put down half a dozen vocal takes and we took
bits out of each.
Robert puts so much stuff on my voice live, it's unbelievable - Aural Exciter,
compression, several forms of reverb and some delay.
Q. And the guitar sound is the same throughout, which gives the album
continuity?
A. I've always thought the best way to survive musically is to go for what is
definitive at the time. The most definitive thing I can do is not put effects on
my guitar because everyone else does. My guitar has a natural, warm sound that I
really like. But if everyone had a sound like that I'd use effects!
Q. What was the big lesson in making this album?
A. The biggest thing I learned was hoe to song. But the biggest effect overall
was on my perception of the other people in the band; it's drawn us in really
close.
We've crossed that line where bands break up.
Q. How does it most succeed?
A. It's got gestalt; it succeeds in every way. It's all held together with one
strong idea
Q. You said you say it as a document of a time in history, not just of the band
but of the place where the band lives. Would you feel it has failed if it ends
up in mint condition in a secondhand rack?
A. The first album was in secondhand racks six weeks after we released it.
That's a natural part of this business. But I still believe it is an artefact in
cultural terms. I'm acutely aware of the effect records have years and years
down the track.
Let's play...
Say Goodbye
I had a loose chord progression and lyric - the song was inspired by the
conversation of a guy and girl I heard through a wall. They'd just come back
from overseas and she said that ("You don't make me feel like I'm a woman any
more") to him. I found that particularly perverse because of the state of my own
relationship at the time, so I wanted to structure a pop song around it.
I said to Doug, "Let's get a very up, aggressive tom-tom rhythm', then we worked
out the bassline, with John putting in those little clicks to give the rhythm
tension.
We played on that for a while, tried going up to the D, and then we got that gap
in the song. Jack worked out the brass intro, then the really aggressive
percussive brass in the middle. It all came together very quickly, in about two
days.
Q. It maintains the big sound well on radio...
Gavin mixes through the transistor radio - a normal AM radio which is hooked up
to the monitors and the music goes right through the radio circuitry and
speaker. So the mix sounds like it would being broadcast. This was the final
test for each round mix.
John overdubbed the bass, as I said, to accentuate the percussive aspects; I
whispered by own vocal lines again beneath the main vocal to give it that
sibilance.
Verdict: It's great, a really good song. The thing about Hunters' songs is that
they never come out the way I want them to. And that's great. The only part of
this that turned out as I expected was the opening rave.
Is There Anybody In There?
This is a pretty simple lyric. The music began with John doing a wacking E-G
riff - where he bends the string almost off the neck - and a really solid
backbeat. We wanted the backbeat to sound interesting because Doug doesn't like
doing them otherwise. Then Jack introduced one of this unusual chord
progressions - semitone key chances, which we've never used before. The
instrumentation of this is basically Jack's.
Q. That ascending vocal section ("better cover it over") sounds like a 60's
thing...
Yeah, there's a Roy Orbison song that uses that ascending harmony, it's a bit
like Twist and Shout too.
We put glockenspiel in the brass break and the guitars are quite artificial,
very studio. I used a super-clean Sheik sort of sound, which I don't use live. I
regret it a bit, but it has a better sound through small speakers when it is
clean like that.
Q. Guitar takes up so much space on records...
Yeah. Gavin was really good at rationalising that.
Verdict: I was disturbed by that clinical guitar, but I don't think I would
change it. This is one of our big songs live. No, there's nothing I would
change.
Throw Your Arms Around Me
We've recorded this song three times. First was the two-track single, and the
production wasn't good enough; next time we got a better feel. But it's such a
strong melody and strong optimistic sentiment that we thought it was worth
recording again.
Q. This song sounds different to the others, from another time?
It inspired a lot of the other lyrics, and it was like a touchstone for a new
direction of the band. It sounds difference because I basically wrote it on an
acoustic guitar. I don't often take such a complete song to the band. It's a
definitive, folky love song.
We double-tracked acoustic guitars, put acoustic harmonies on the electric
guitar parts. We really went to town on this - real strings. At the end we just
invented all these vocal harmonies in the studiol the whole band is singing
there.
Verdict: It's great, one of the best things we've ever done. I just wish we'd
recorded it like this the first time.
Everything's on Fire
Q. My criticism of this is that, at the end where it really opens out with the
brass, the drums are too pedestrian.
Yeah. I think the main problem is that it is too long at the end; if we had
shortened it, that wouldn't have been so prominent. We really did sit on that
groove, longer, I think, than the interest level can be sustained.
It came about with me, John and Doug playing a Stones sort of feel. We wanted to
write a soul sort of song. It's had a mercurial life; we've played with it and
dropped it at various times.
I re-did all the guitars to get a crisper rhythm, keeping them cleaner and back
in the mix. It will be edited for a single.
Relief
We wrote this about a year ago. It had a turgid backbeat rhythm - grungy, and I
had this meandering guitar line under the vocal. It wasn't working for me and we
dropped it.
When we came to recording we were able to stand back from it; the bass and drums
went down as they are live, and we were able to give it more colour. Then I
worked out with Gavin, a three-chord melody under the voice for guitar and
organ, and clean slide guitar and organ, and clean slide guitar sound. This
lifted the song out.
We put piano at the end with guitar and brass.
Verdict: The recording of this has taught us how to play it live. It's been a
surprise, this song. I really like playing it now and it's probably one of the
strongest songs on the record.
The Finger
Q. An odd song, very claustrophobic...
That's good, because that's what it's about. This and Throw Your Arms are the
oldest songs on the record. Here I was trying to describe coming in from the
landscape to a tiny little room. It's the closest to our old style.
We started with a slow rhythm and just two notes and I wanted an elegant melody,
which came from trumpet and guitar. It's a real jam song.
We didn't do that much to it, we tried other riffs on piano and guitar and they
didn't work.
Verdict: I'm not that curious about this song; it's not quite as fresh as the
others. It's the least successful in translation.
The 99th Home Position
We wrote this in the studio. It started with the drums. I'd been harping on
about having an up-tempo song and John started playing this tom-tom rhythm and a
few songs later we had the bassline. We wrote the whole thing in about three
hours.
I'd found a book on square dancing, published in the 50's, and one of the terms
they use is 'Home Position', the position the couple always comes back to. It
said the man must bring the woman back to his home position because if the woman
goes to hers there will be a heap of trouble. That's actually what the book said
- a very '50's way of looking at relationships. The whole thing was a metaphor
for courtship, so I thought I would write a lyric about Home Position, such that
no matter what happens in life the man and the woman always have to come back
together again.
To keep it simple we kept this song as a three-piece - John, Doug and me. I used
my straight Fender sound and treated it.
Verdict: The guitar could be a bit louder. It's my second favourite track.
Dog
At soundchecks John had been playing a riff on the E string - it sounded like a
3/4 rhythm but it resolved. I had a lyric and when we went into the studio I
asked him to play that riff. Then Doug added the soul rhythm with that
anticipated kick beat at the beginning of every second bar, and I played like an
ACDC guitar - a straight chord over a root note, which is a traditional rock 'n'
roll device, but because of the tug in the rhythm, it sounded like Hunters
underneath.
We were listening to ACDC a lot at this time - liking the really simple tension
between guitars and drums in their music. And, the fact that their songs are so
skeletal.
We were going to bring the bass in but decided to keep it as a three-piece which
was a good idea.
Lyrics-wise, I tried to get tuned into being an animal, really subservient to
someone.
Q. It sounds like it's played live but lacks the ambience you would get in that
situation...
Yeah... I could have used some high bell-type guitar sounds to get that. But we
didn't think of it at the time, so...
Verdict: It's the most successful lyrically, from my point of view.
Stuck on You
Music and lyrics by Ian and Stephanie Rilen (ex-Sardine, Ian still plays with
X). We wanted to do a cover version; it keeps us on our toes. It allows us to
define what our approach to music is, and puts our interpretive power to the
test because we can look at our version relative to the original.
It doesn't sound like our kind of melody but it gives a different perspective to
the band.
We wrote the middle section. Their version is not as heavy in the bottom-end,
and our vocals are harsher (though if we recorded it again I might do them
softer). We cut it up and made it more of a pop arrangement with lots of guitar
parts, and we used a raw viola to get a similar effect to the Farfisa organ
sound Stephanie had used on the original.
Verdict: I'd like to do a softer vocal.
This Morning
Epic, the big one. This is an old song, written about a year ago. I had a melody
idea and John put a simple blues progression bass under that, and we jammed for
a while and realised we didn't want it to be a straight ballad.
So we disrupted the whole thing, going into a totally different mood with that
semi-shuffle on the snare. We didn't try to write it too quickly, left it for a
while because when we got into that feel we had to figure out how to climax the
song.
After a few rehearsals it settled, but live it took a while to shift gear, make
the changes positive.
Q. You seem to have an easy control of it; having so many changes it still
flows...
We've shortened it a lot from the live version and I organised my guitar more
clearly in the buildups. It was hard to get the backing track down; we really
had to concentrate.
Q. I like the part where Doug's doing that tom rhythm and then goes down to
doing that same rhythm on the sticks. It randomises it a lot...
Yeah, that's fantastic live. I think in this song we've galvanised the new
Hunters.
Verdict: It's a really powerful recording - an overstatement of a simple idea.
The strings helped to do that.
With this whole record we've tried to bring everything down to its skeletal
elements. It's a very rational album.
Q. Your cover symbol, what's that about?
It's the symbol of healing - the surgeon's knife and the snake in Greek
mythology is the link between the physical and spiritual worlds. It's a
spiritual symbol really. Good music connects the listened with his or her own
soul. That's what this album is attempting to do. And also, I want to get a
tattoo like that one day...
Hunters: John Archer bass; Doug Falconer drums; Jack Howard, trumpet, string
arrangements; Robert Miles, sound-mixing, artwork; Mark Seymour, lead vocals,
guitar, lyrics; Jeremy Smith, french horn, keyboards; Michael Waters, trombone,
keyboards. All - backing vocals.
Outboard players: Gavin McKillop, Shellie Conway - backing vocals. The Como
Quartet - Adam Duncan, viola, 'psychedelic credibility'; Alex Black, violin;
George Vi, violin; Peter O'Reilly, Sue Hadlee, cello; Dianne Howard, piano;
Debbie Waugh, marimba/xylophone.
The Album: Human Frailty, recorded in three-week block at Allan Eaton's Studio,
St Kilda; mixed (two and a half weeks) at AAV South Melbourne; cut at Town House
Studios. Produced by Gavin MacKillop and Hunters and Collectors, engineered and
mixed by Gavin MacKillop, assisted by Robert Miles; assistant engineers, Michael
Streefkerk, Doug Brady.
Backtrack: Former 1980, started playing Melbourne, 1981, released self-produced
EP's World of Stone and Payload, followed by debut album Talking to a Stranger
in 1982. Video for the album picked up by MTV and band builds up a hard-core
audience through dance club and college radio exposure of the album. 1983 - tour
of England, North America and New Zealand; second album, Fireman's Curse, and
EP, Judas Sheep are released. 1984 - album Jaws of Life released and band sheds
three members to arrive at present six-piece line-up. Band now negotiating with
several labels for UK/European releases, Japanese release for the new album
settled via CBS Sony.
Hardware: Mark - Fender Twin Fender Telecaster (1971) with Seymour Duncan
pick-up; no effects. John - Marshall bass head, JBL J bin, Aural Exciter, Boss
graphic, Fernandez bass with EMG pick-up. Doug - Singerland kit, Paiste and
Zidjian cymbals. Jack - trumpet; Jeremy - french form; Michael - trombone. Brass
players - use a Korg ordan, with lots of EQ too. Studio hardware: six-string
Fender Coranado bass used to overdub basslines to reinforce percussive aspect;
ancient Hammond organ Ibanez acoustic, glockenspiel, marimba strings.
Songwriting Tools: A Walkman-style recorder and acoustic guitar occasionally a
drum machine. Band works out all arrangements live with Robert (sound-mixer)
building songs with effects.
Comments
Thanks James!
