"I guess we're pushing 6,000 shows now," says Greedy Smith, "so we're very aware of the songs people want to hear. This album is interesting 'cause most people know most of the songs, but not this way. So it's a dangerous game. I said to Martin, 'We've got to be careful, we could really piss people off'..."

 

Fat chance. For 28 years, a Mentals song has been a ticket to some blissful eternal summer in the great Aussie subconscious. Dolled up in a safari suit or stripped down to speedos makes little difference. A staggering 22 of them have hit the Top 40 since 1977 and more than half of those are beautifully retooled here, in the warm wood-grain of an all-acoustic encore.

 

"I think it sounds fresh because being '80s recordings, a lot of these songs were originally done with drum machines," says Greedy. "Because we hadn't played them acoustically before, we went with this idea that however we first played them was how they were supposed to be.

 

"We sat down in our little lock-up with two microphones and recorded everything we could think of. A few of those made it untouched, the rest we recorded more nicely but it was quick. There wasn't much soul searching."

 

The instinctive approach lends a countrified, rolling banjo gait to Live It Up and I Didn't Mean To Be Mean. The Nips Are Getting Bigger trades its distinctive bass line for an elegant guitar run. A scrubbed ukulele announces Too Many Times.

 

"You're So Strong has quite a different flavour to it," Greedy adds. "If You Leave Me Can I Come Too? is sadder. So is Come Around: Martin (Plaza) changed one of the majors to a minor and that was all it took. I thought 'Oh, that's how Split Enz wrote all those great songs'. The World Seems Difficult I was really surprised by, cause that was nearly all machines originally."

 

Of all the Liberation Blue Acoustic albums to date, Plucked probably boasts the most stunning spread of instantly familiar household tunes. Other surprises are a languorous return to Reg Mombassa's early album track, Blacktown to Bondi, an apparently sitar-spiced version of Brain Brain and what Greedy calls the "Fever harmonica swing version" of Mr Natural.

 

The trump card is mix engineer John Haeny, an American legend who began recording the likes of Duke Ellington in Minneapolis in the '50s and went on to give albums by Linda Ronstadt, Little Feat, Jackson Browne and Judy Collins the peerless warmth of classic '60s and '70s acoustic records.

 

"It's not an edgy record," Greedy chuckles. "It's very warm and emotional, very satisfying really. I'm sure everyone who does this says the same thing, but it was cathartic, sentimental, rewarding. All those good things."