Live Review: Hunters & Collectors, The Panics

It remains a strange ritual of Australian rock. A heaving sweaty mass of (mostly) blokes bellowing, “You don't make me feel… like I'm a woman anymore!”, as a band – which includes French horn, trumpet and trombone – blasts back at them. But this is Hunters & Collectors, taking a lap of honour a decade-and-a-half from their heyday, and still able to conjure a power that can alternately pin you to the wall, then make you ponder the male machismo – or just be huge loud music to neck beers to, maaaate.     

For their part, The Panics were just that bit too polite for what followed. Jae Laffer's vocal keen is a gliding thing, and with second percussionist/drummer and bank of keyboards the noise was full and assured, but even the dark march of Cruel Guards tended to evaporate in the half-full room. Maybe just a bit 'right band, wrong place'.

For a group with some fractious internal dynamics – read Mark Seymour's book for lessons on how not to run a railroad – that the unwieldy beast that is Hunters & Collectors can stride on and lock into the jagged groove of Talking To A Stranger so easily suggests this isn't just about a good payday. Seymour is still that clenched pugnacious figure at the front, as the various elements of the noise divebombed around him. The shifting gears in This Morning one moment reflective, then urgent emotion.

There's 30 years of set pieces: Dog throbbing on John Archer's monstrous bass line, while Barry Palmer's guitar strafed and swooped; up another gear with that above-referenced Say Goodbye; and unexpected Crime Of Passion's almost operatic melodrama. To the anthems of the encore: Throw Your Arms Around Me with added refugee-related verse, which Seymour explained in best school teacher manner, while The Slab lurched as it should. Finally, guests Jimmy Moginie and Peter Garrett connecting the dots of various Oz-rock eras – all pounding into The Saints' Know Your Product. The bald guy still flails – if a little more gingerly these days – but it's the ideal full stop to a celebration of the form.