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MARK SEYMOUR & THE UNDERTOW
+ Ben Morgan
@ Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney,
24th May 2024
(Live Review)

Review and photos  by Alec Smart (@alecsmart_fotos)

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Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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Mark Seymour and his three-piece backing band, The Undertow, performed at Dee Why RSL Club on Friday 24 May, on The Boxer Tour, promoting their newly-released album, The Boxer. They were supported by singer-songwriter Ben Morgan.

Dee Why local Ben Morgan revealed the full house at Dee Why RSL Club was the largest crowd he’d performed to. Ben’s songs are gentle, thoughtful ballads, with a soulful voice accompanied by his finger-picked acoustic guitar.

On several of his compositions he ratchets up the tempo, particularly those when he swaps his acoustic guitar for a lap-steel guitar with a slider.

Shortly into his set he announced he’d just released a new song that day, La Luna, which coincided nicely with the full moon glowing in the night sky outside. (In the next 48 hours, the song was played over 3000 times on Spotify.)

Morgan has a five-track EP, Begin Again (released 2022) and three singles in his discography and you can find his music on YouTube here.

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Ben Morgan, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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Mark Seymour has enjoyed a creative and successful solo career since the initial suspension of Hunters & Collectors in 1998, the band he co-founded and fronted and wrote most of the songs during their main touring years 1981-98. He still performs with them occasionally following their reformation in 2013.

The Hunters were initially inspired by Krautrock – distinguished by heavy percussion and noisy guitars that emphasised rhythm over melody. It wasn’t until their fourth album, Human Frailty, (on which Seymour wrote all the lyrics and had a major influence on the tunes) that they became known for their strong melodies and singalong choruses.

This change brought them before a wider audience, inspired top-selling albums, performances at AFL Grand Finals, the headlining of a benefit concert to aid victims of the Victorian Bushfire Crisis (2009), and, ultimately, induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame (2005).

Seymour is a prolific and talented songwriter – nine studio albums with Hunters & Collectors, six solo albums (1997-2007, including the ARIA award-winning One Eyed Man in 2001) and five with The Undertow – with the latest (April 2024) release, The Boxer, underpinning the current Australian tour.

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Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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The new songs blend well with his earlier material – and Seymour always spices up a show with a few of his old Hunters & Collectors’ classics. Mark described the latest album as a ‘series of portraits’; the song topics range from observations, recollections, cautionary tales and people’s stories.

All but three of the 11 songs on the new album featured in the Dee Why RSL concert.

Whilst covering all lead vocals, onstage Mark alternates between an acoustic Maton guitar and an electric Fender Telecaster, backed superbly by his talented accomplices: Cameron McKenzie (lead guitar), John Favaro (bass guitar) and Pete Maslen (drums).

The band launched the Dee Why show with two new numbers, She Burned Her Bridges Down and The Boxer, followed by Joanna (from the 2020 album Slow Dawn).

Dee Why RSL Club’s upstairs performance space is arguably the premier live music venue on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Popular for weddings, talks and social events as well as concerts, it features a central dance floor surrounded by a raised seating area with dining tables.

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Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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When Seymour and his band began playing Say Goodbye, Hunters & Collectors’ 1987 hit, there was a flood of people from the tables down onto the dance floor, most of whom remained there for the entirety of the concert.

Other Hunters & Collectors’ songs performed included, When The River Runs Dry, Do You See what I See?, the popular singalong ballad Throw Your Arms Around Me, and the iconic Holy Grail (more on the latter below).

Songs from his post-Hunters’ solo years included Cry in the Rain (from the 2011 album Undertow), The Dogs Of Williamstown (from the 2020 album Slow Dawn), and Westgate from the 2007 album of the same name.

The latter is an emotional lament told from the perspective of a worker who was on duty when the West Gate Bridge, spanning the Yarra River near Port Melbourne, collapsed on 15 October 1970, killing 35 construction workers.

Before he performed Dogs of Williamstown, Seymour said that his brother warned him never to write a song about football. “He’s in a very famous band,” he added with a smile – and of course that brother is Nick Seymour, long-term bassist with Neil Finn’s little-known band Crowded House.

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Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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The song is actually an ode to an 1857 convict rebellion in Williamstown, Melbourne, after their rations were withheld, which resulted in the murder of magistrate Jon Price, who was almost beheaded with a spade.

A personal favourite among the new songs is Waiting On The Kid, which featured beautiful guitar work from Cameron McKenzie. One of the key singles from The Boxer album, Seymour co-wrote the ballad with Linda Bull (of Maori-Australian duo Vika & Linda).

Seymour explained the title was inspired by the time he called Linda and she revealed she was (as the lyrics state), “Standing on the corner in the rain, waitin’ on the kid,” – collecting her daughter from school.

Perhaps due to time constraints, the band skipped one song from their printed set list, Kosciusko, from the Mayday album (2015), which is a personal favourite of this reviewer.

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Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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However, they performed a two-song encore: the John Prine cover She is My Everything (which appears on the new album) and Holy Grail, the one everybody associates with Australian Rules football (second only to that other iconic Aussie Rules’ song, Up There Cazaly, by one-hit wonders Two Man Band).

Oddly enough, Holy Grail song wasn’t written about football, nor sport in general, nor the religious fervour surrounding the Medieval quest for holy Christian relics by King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table – much mocked by comedy troupe Monty Python in their 1975 humorous film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Seymour explained, “This is about a little bloke who cooked chicken for Napoleon in 1812”, during the French emperor’s disastrous invasion of Russia.

Ranked in the Top 30 of Triple M Radio’s Most Australian Songs of All Time, Seymour has performed Holy Grail at the AFL Grand Final five times: 1998, 2002, 2009, 2013 and 2023.

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Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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Set List

She Burned Her Bridges Down
The Boxer
Joanna
Say Goodbye [Hunters & Collectors’ cover]
Cry in the Rain
Cherry Red
When the River Runs Dry [Hunters & Collectors’ cover]
All My Rage
Dogs of Williamstown
Waiting on the Kid
Sleeping Dogs
Westgate
Stars of Fitzroy
How the West was Won
Do You See what I See? [Hunters & Collectors’ cover]
Throw your Arms Around Me [Hunters & Collectors’ cover]

encore

She is My Everything [John Prine cover]
Holy Grail [Hunters & Collectors’ cover]

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Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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Check Out Alec Smart’s (@alecsmart_fotos) full gallery of this event HERE

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Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Dee Why RSL Club, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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Follow MARK SEYMOUR
& THE UNDERTOW
Website – Instagram – Facebook –  YouTube

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AMNPLIFY – DB