Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: The Way to Go Out/Under One Roof/Natural Selection (DVD)

"But I know you want more!" as Tim Shaw would have said 17 years ago, and as it so happens, although I've reviewed all 14 CDS in the Horn of Plenty box, there are still the 2 DVDs to go.

The Way to Go Out (1985) is an appropriately raw-sounding show, originally released on VHS as well as CD. It's not for casual fans, but it's a good one to have if you love The Jaws of Life as much as I do. You could probably find better bootlegs on the internet these days though.

Under One Roof (1998) is a Sydney show from the band's farewell tour. The sound and picture are superb and the set is a decent representation of the band's entire career. Mark Seymour's voice had smoothed out considerably by this point, but he was able to revisit his 1984 self and belt out a convincing "42 Wheels".

Natural Selection contains every promo video the band ever did. Whoop-dee-doo. It's best for multiple sittings if you're likely to get weary watching 18 videos by the same band. There's not much else to say except to note that "Carry Me" is same version (both the audio and video) as that featured in "The Way to Go Out".

Well, now I've reviewed the entire contents of the Horn of Plenty box. I'm going to go to sleep for a month.

Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: Living in Large Rooms/...And Lounges

Given Hunters & Collectors reputation as a live band, the Living in Large Rooms and Lounges 2 CD set (1995) is a valued possession amongst completists, a group that technically includes me now. The problem inherent in all live albums, though, is that the better they are, the more they remind the listener that they are no substitute for having actually attended the concert in question or one like it. People who have seen Hunters & Collectors live, a group which will probably never include me, will likely tell you that about these albums. Hell, the audiences at the two shows in question will tell you as you listen by way of their rapturous applause and sing-along shenanigans.

Living in Large Rooms documents a typical pub show from 1995. As such, the early stuff is fairly represented; the period of 84-89 accounts for roughly half the set. "42 Wheels" explodes through the speakers, demonstrating that the band was still capable of an extraordinary performance at this late stage of its career, and it makes me wish they'd included "The Slab" and "Inside a Fireball" among others. The later stuff demonstrates that the band was able to judge the relative merits of its own material, or at least its suitability to a live setting; see "Easy" in particular.

...And Lounges is a strange album indeed. An acoustic Hunters & Collectors show, eh? To paraphrase Dr. House, "that makes sense...if you don't think about it for more than two seconds". The conceit necessitates the balance to shift towards the band's later, more ballad-heavy material ("True Tears of Joy, "Courtship of America") and greatly renders inert the earlier stuff ("When the River Runs Dry" loses its electric thunder and "The Slab" makes no sense at all). "Betrayer" and "Holy Grail" sound fine, and of course it would have been baffling to exclude "Throw Your Arms Around Me", but I prefer the Human Frailty version. The most confounding aspect of the album is the inclusion of "Say Goodbye" as a secret track, having already included it in the main set as well as that of its sister album.

Bill Callahan - Rough Travel for a Rare Thing

You couldn't walk far without tripping over a live album in the 70s and 80s. They were quickly made and usually ugly, usually featuring an immodest photo of the performers on the front and a tracklist and very little else - sometimes not even the venue or date - on the back. Many were unceremoniously transferred to CD in the 80s and can be found for $5 in bargain bins; the original vinyls are even cheaper. The fact that hardly any of them ever sold in great numbers didn't seem to matter, but now that anyone can make a bootleg and soundboard recordings aren't hard to come by, they're finally becoming less common. Some live albums are actually very good, and Rough Travel for a Rare Thing is one of them. If we gain nothing else from the fact that there is now an official Bill Callahan/Smog live album, it's that the excellent show it documents, from a small club in Melbourne, is now beknownst to more than just a few hundred Bit Torrenters who may have already downloaded it.

So what makes a great live album? An excellent performance? Check. But of course any band capable of delivering such a performance should be able to do so on a regular basis, and presumably there are many shows that could have stood in for this one. Well chosen set? Check. Five of the eleven songs here are from the classic A River Ain't Too Much to Love, the final album released under the Smog name - it's therefore not a well balanced set, but the inclusion of any songs from that album is always a very very good thing. The set also features the great earlier songs "Bathysphere" and "Held". Creative re-arrangment of the material? Check. The instrumentation is all acoustic, yet "Bathysphere" still rocks and a clever string arrangement stands in place of the electric riff in "Held". Breaking down the divide between the performer and the listener? Check...er, wait. How does one do that in a way that a studio album doesn't, despite occupying the same medium and being just as "live" in your lounge room? Amiable banter between songs? There's hardly any of that here, but neither is there in Nirvana's Live at Reading, and both that and this are, in my opinion, two of the best official live albums ever released. No, the trick is that the divide between the best artists and their listeners doesn't exist. That was always the point with Callahan, but here you know the songs were recorded in the kind of venue you probably frequent yourself whether there's a band playing or not, and if you close your eyes, you can pretend you're there.

Related:
Bill Callahan - Dream River
Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time