'That Striped Sunlight Sound'
What The Critics Say
This curiosity piece is perhaps an essential document for fans of Australia's Go-Betweens. That Striped Sunlight Sound (a feeling Mssrs. Forster and McLennan have used in print to describe the band's sound) consists first of a DVD containing two different films of shows done at the Tivoli Theatre in the band's hometown of Brisbane in August of 2005. The first gig places Robert Forster and Grant McLennan up close and personal playing acoustic versions of "Black Mule" and "Clouds." The band enters on "Boundary Rider," and the magic truly begins. Carrying on through "Born to a Family" and "Streets of Your Town," the Go-Betweens are a band that sounds on-stage just a little more immediate than in the studio, which is a compliment. Other tracks include "Here Comes a City," "The Devil's Eye," "People Say," and "Karen," among others. The performance is inspired, loose, and lively. There is also a CD component to the package that carries the entire 70-minute show. The other gig on the DVD is a special "songwriter's session," held on Sunday, August 7. This film is quite wonderful in that it features Forster and McLennan playing acoustically and commenting on the process of songwriting, the songs themselves, and the Go-Betweens' history. In many ways this is the real gem in the package. It includes versions of "Lee Remick," "Cattle and Cane," "Head Full of Steam," "Bachelor Kisses," "Dive for Your Memory," and five other cuts. The intimate charm of this film is irresistible in that the pair are home, relaxed, and wide open. There are no pretensions on display here, just an honest look at what makes Forster and McLennan tick as a pair and as individual writers. This is a fine addition to the Go-Betweens' catalog. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Though it's been two years since Bright Yellow Bright Orange, Oceans Apart is further proof that the Go-Betweens are still a going concern. It is their third recording since reuniting after a 12-year hiatus. The lineup is the same as the last time out: Songwriters and frontmen Robert Forster and Grant McLennan are joined once more by drummer Glenn Thompson, and bassist, keyboardist, and backing vocalist Adele Pickvance. In addition, there is a small wind and brass section on some tracks, and, for a change, no strings. The band dug into its past for this one, bringing in producer Mark Wallis, who helmed the sessions for the classic 16 Lovers Lane in 1988. Oceans Apart sounds very little like its aforementioned predecessor, but that's hardly a problem. Wallis understands the band's subtleties and the textures they like to evoke better than anyone else they've ever worked with. His production is more assertive, but hardly excessive. In fact, he lends the added dimension (he loves keyboards and electronic percussions) the band's records have lacked since their comeback. The set opens with "Here Comes a City," a literary rocker by Forster. Its shimmering, chunka-chunka riff and Forster's vocals feel like a refined, musical nod to the Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime." It's also paranoid, clamoring for an edge it doesn't quite get to, and careens along to an uncertain yet quite arresting end. Things become a bit more characteristic on McLennan's beautiful "Finding You," with its lilting guitars, spare, clean lines, and poetic, emotional lyrics that can open veins with the fine slash of their honesty. The dreamy, pillowy "No Reason to Cry" is among the more elegant songs McLennan has ever composed. Its soulful vocal, chorus, and the way Wallis layers keyboards, vocals, and Forster's distorted lead lines give the lyrics great weight and depth. It's a truly wonderful pop song. The poetry in "Darlinghurst Nights" is some of Forster's more poignant, moving through reverie, grief, and loss. The weave of acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, drums, and percussion surrounds his voice, pushing it out in front just enough to let his words move toward the listener with enough force to draw her in. In contrast, his "Lavender" touches country music but never goes there. Loops, keyboards, and washes of guitars carry the tune somewhere else as a clarinet wafts in from the margin. Once more, its reverie is in his lyric, with a hint of the previous, as it meets the solitary present, and it's gorgeous. The electronic beats in "The Statue" are a bit jarring until the watery, warm, and luscious keyboards slip underneath subtly, only to be buoyed by a ringing lead-guitar line and McLennan's vocal speaking his desire without flinching. Forster's brief, elegiac "Mountains Near Dellray" closes the set with another sense of place, very different from his opener's. The mood is pastoral as the guitars wind and slip over one another. In addition, early editions of the CD come with a six-track, live EP, recorded at the Barbican in 2004. With its imagination, startling creativity, and sheer pop soul, Oceans Apart is the first great Go-Betweens' record of the 21st century. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Bright Yellow Bright Orange'
What The Critics Say
Fans of the Go-Betweens were happily amazed when Robert Forster and Grant McLennan reunited after 12 years and began recording again. This is the second product of their hopefully long-lived reunion. Recording in its native Australia, the duo added bassist and vocalist Adele Pickvance and drummer Glenn Thompson to the band for 2003's Bright Yellow Bright Orange. All the hallmarks of a great Go-Betweens record are here: memorable melodies, wry and literate (in Forster's case, literary) lyrics, Forster's dramatic vocals, and McLennan's sweet croon. It is indeed a great record, but falls just short of being a great Go-Betweens record. Bright Yellow Bright Orange lacks some of the energy and excitement that Friends of Rachel Worth (and some of the earlier records) had. That record had the thrill of rediscovery in its favor; this album feels more like Forster and McLennan are settling comfortably into their partnership. The tempos are relaxed, the melodies easy to hum along with and underpinned with strummed acoustic guitars, the music very straightforward and steady, and the lyrics almost sentimental. A larger number of tracks than usual feature lush background vocals; Pickvance picks up where the sorely missed Amanda Brown left off and provides timely harmonies. McLennan's tracks sound particularly mellow: "Mrs. Morgan" is a gently propulsive strum-pop gem, "Crooked Lines" is a ballad with lovely vocals by Pickvance, and "Unfinished Business" is a brief, achingly pretty, piano-based ballad that ends the record on a strong note. Forster's contributions are more dramatic: the near spoken word track "In Her Diary," an unsparing look at a lonely life; the country ballad "Too Much of One Thing"; and the hard-rocking "Make Her Day," with some very nontypical distorted guitar. Album highlight "Old Mexico" pulls off the rare feat of featuring Forster and McLennan sharing vocal duties. It is an instant classic, the pounding beat and staccato vocals of the verses giving way to the lush chorus that is vaguely and pleasantly reminiscent of "Bachelor Kisses." Go-Betweens fans should be very happy with Bright Yellow Bright Orange and glad the band decided to stay together and continue to make smart, exciting adult pop music. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide
'The Friends of Rachel Worth'
What The Critics Say
Twelve years after disbanding the Go-Betweens, Melbourne-based singer/songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan reformed the band they began in 1978 for their seventh album. While they haven't quite picked up where they left off (none of the other original members hopped on board), and the violin/viola that was such an integral aspect of their last few albums appears sporadically, this isn't a huge departure from the trademarked Go-Betweens sound. Poetic, languid, spoken/sung vocals similar to Lou Reed weave between lovely melodies whose appeal unfolds with repeated listens. Strummed guitars and sympathetic drums (sadly, the marvelous percussionist Lindy Morrisson, a mainstay of the band, is missing) spar with Forster and McLennan's breathy, often stream of consciousness vocals. But since the singer/songwriters evenly split the ten tracks, this sounds more like a combination of two solo albums rather than one from a cohesive unit. The backing musicians, which include Olympia's similarly hyphenated Sleater-Kinney, are generally faceless except on the riff-rocking "German Farmhouse" where the band sounds even more like the Velvet Underground than usual. Forster's ode to Patti Smith, the album closing "When She Sang About Angels," is occasionally gorgeous, with half-recited lyrics that sometimes flow yet often sound uncomfortably meshed with the beautiful melody. But on the effervescent "Going Blind," the duo returns to the uncluttered, wistful, folk-pop sound of their best work. While it won't garner new fans, or even make newcomers search out their earlier work, The Friends of Rachel Worth is a convincing if inconsistent return to form. Its highlights recall the past glories of this commercially overlooked band and add a handful of keepers to their best work. ~ Hal Horowitz, All Music Guide
'16 Lovers Lane'
What The Critics Say
Arguably Australia's greatest pop group ever, The Go-Betweens seemed to save the best for last when they split in 1989. (They reunited in 1999, and have issued two more studio recordings since that time). 16 Lovers Lane is simply breathtaking; it is a deeply moving, aurally sensual collection of songs about relationships and the broken side of love that never lapses into cheap sentimentality or cynicism. Songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan had always been visionary when it came to charting personal and relational melancholy and heartbreak, but here, their resolve focused on charting the depths of the romantic's soul when it has been disillusioned or crestfallen, is simply and convincingly taut. While it's true that the group was going through its own version of a soap opera-styled romantic saga, that emotional quagmire seemingly fueled its energies and focus, resulting in an album so texturally rich, lyrically sharp, and musically honest, its effect is nothing less than searing on an any listener who doesn't have sawdust instead of blood in his or her veins.Opening with McLennan's "Love Goes On," the stage is set for a kind of refined yet primal emotional transference that pop music is rarely capable of revealing. As he sings: "There are times when I want you/I want you so much I could bust/I know a thing about lovers/Lovers lie down in trust/The people next door they got problems/They got things they can't name/I know about things about lovers/ Lovers don't feel any shame/Late not night when the light's down low/The candle burns to the end/I know a thing about darkness/Darkness ain't my friend/Love goes on anyway," the doorway to the heart and its secrets opens. In the grain of his voice lie the flowers in the dustbin whose names are desperation and affirmation. With its hyperactive acoustic guitars, Amanda Brown's cooing string arrangements, and the deftly layered, subtly played brass instruments, the tune becomes a gauzy anthem; it celebrates the ravaged heart as a beacon of strained hope in the entryway to a hall of bewilderment. He follows it with "Quiet Heart," a song whose opening was admittedly influenced in structure by U2's "With Or Without You," but blows it away lyrically and with its subtly shifting melody and harmony between the guitars. Brown's multi-layered strings actually stride the backbeat's pulse. His protagonist speaks to an absent lover. His ache offers a view of his own weakness, desperation, and an all-consuming tenderness: "I tried to tell you/But I can only say when we're apart/How I miss your quiet, quiet heart." Forster seems to underline McLennan' s raw emotionalism with his painterly, nearly baroque, "Love Is A Sign," where images from visual art, remembered scenarios, and real life brokenness intermingle effortlessly with the elegance of mandolins, a string orchestra, and a shimmering bassline. With "Streets Of Your Town," the Go-Betweens scored a minor hit in the U.K., and even got played on American radio for a moment, but despite the fact that it has the most memorable hook on a record filled with them, it merely underscores how constant the quality is on the record. Evidenced further by "The Devil's Eye," and the shattering closer "Dive For Your Memory," 16 Lovers Lane is melancholy and somber in theme, but gloriously and romantically presented. Despite the fact that band has but a cult following, even in the 21st century, the Go-Betweens have nonetheless given us a far more literate, magnificently written, performed, and produced slab of pop classicism, than Fleetwood Mac's wonderfully coked out, love as co-dependency fest, Rumours. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Tallulah, the Go-Betweens fifth album, was supposed to be the band's breakthrough recording in America. That said, its sound is nearly a full-on break with the edginess that began to fade on 1986's Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express. More lush, rounded, polished, it sounds like a record made in the mid-'80s thanks in large part to Lindy Morrison's use of drum programs in addition to her trap kit. Add to this the contributions of new member Amanda Brown on violin, oboe, and backing vocals and one has a revamped band. Fans didn't take to the new sound with kindness initially, but the songwriting of Forster and McLennan was so much more focused and taut, it more than compensates for production errors. Nowhere is this more evident than "Right Now," the album's opener. The multi-tracked violins drive the center of the tune sprightly, in an off-rail, cut-time tempo. Robert Vickers' colorful keyboards and Morrison's programming are truly adornments, but McLennan's soulful yet philosophical vocal anchors the tune on bedrock and is supported by a beautiful chorus of backing vocals led by Brown. "You Tell Me," sung by Forster, leads with distorted guitars held in check by the sweetness of the melody and Morrison's meld of trap and synthetic drumming. Once more, keyboards counter the guitars as Vickers accents the beat pushing Forster and the wafting backing vocals deeper inside lyric and melody. McLennan's "Someone Else's Wife," is, by contrasts, stark, dark, and suffocating with moody strings accenting the protagonist's plight. The driving "Cure-ish" riff that kicks off Forster's "I Just Get Caught Out," is nearly transcendent; its pained verses are juxtaposed against backing vocalists filling the refrain with a cheery ba-ba-ba-ba-bum. The nearly funky organ and bass swirl of "Cut It Out," is unlike any Go-Betweens song before or since. The beautiful cello and violin section that fuels "The House That Jack Kerouac Built," with a shimmering rhythm guitar line, is the perfect maelstrom for Forster's gorgeous images of stolen illicit love in a dodgy cinema and are topped only by his desperate delivery. This recording may not have had fans of the band swooning at the time, but despite its production it has aged exceptionally well although it remains a product firmly of its time. The raw emotion, vulnerable tenderness and romantic desperation in its songs, textured by the blend of strings and keyboards, adds depth and dimension to this well of fine songs. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express'
What The Critics Say
Robert Forster's endearingly fey persona, equal parts Bryan Ferry and gangly bookstore clerk, reaches full flower on the Go-Betweens' fourth album, which tempers the angularity and occasional claustrophobia of the band's previous work with a new airiness and nervous romanticism. The lighter sound can be partly attributed to the growing influence of co-leader Grant McLennan, whose wistful "Cattle and Cane" and "Bachelor Kisses" lent grace to the Go-Betweens' sometimes stilted early records. McLennan's touch is all over Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express -- his "In the Core of a Flame," a love song that manages to be at once tenderhearted and impatient, is a highlight -- but this is still mostly Forster's show, and as such is a revelation. The merry, pastoral opener "Spring Rain" serves as notice that this will be a less dour affair than usual, yet, rather than negating Forster's pained, self-doubting lyrics, the comparatively gentle songs set them off beautifully. "You opened my mail apart at the seams/and now you know I live beyond my means," he sings at the outset of the swaying "Bow Down," and the prettiness of the melody makes him sound all the more uneasy. Other highlights include the sublime "Head Full of Steam," a tale of infatuation so strong that Forster breathlessly reports what his beloved's parents do for a living before realizing that such trivia is probably "of no importance at all" to anyone but him (which doesn't stop him from blurting out just a few lines later the earth-shattering news that neither he nor his object of desire have ever had a nickname). Protestations aside, the urgency in his voice makes it clear that the minutiae of love matter very much indeed, and anyone who's been there will sympathize. Liberty Belle is by no means free of the old Go-Betweens edge (the brooding "Twin Layers of Lightning" is proof of that), but it is the pervading warmth and rueful humor of this release that make it so accessible and such a delight. ~ Kristi Coulter, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
With Robert Vickers and his more straightforward style of bass introduced to the band, McLennan switched fully over to guitar and the quartet entered the studio with producer John Brand for Spring Hill Fair. A slightly more conventional but no less entrancing collection of songs in comparison to Before Hollywood, Spring Hill Fair contains its fair share of Go-Betweens classics, with the rough, barbed emotional edge of many lyrics getting almost gentle arrangements. There's more appearances from guest musicians than ever before, with contributions running from string arrangements to trumpet and saxophone. It's all still the Go-Betweens' own style of chiming guitar rock, able to switch between restraint and a hard-swinging (definite credit again to Morrison -- check out her glammy stomp on "The Old Way Out") but not hard-riffing punch. Leadoff track "Bachelor Kisses," with its subtly intense mid-song break, McLennan's suddenly nervous singing matched by a quiet intensity in the music, is easily matched at the end with Forster's "Man O' Sand to Girl O' Sea," its pounding chorus one of the band's best captured moments of desperation. If McLennan had ultimate pride of place on Before Hollywood with "Cattle and Cane," Forster comes to the fore here with the just tense enough "Draining the Pool for You." It's a blackly humorous portrait of a maintenance worker and the faded superstar who hired him that also succeeds as a perfect kiss-off, with a memorable chorus to boot. Other Forster-sung standouts include "Part Company," an almost-Smiths-like all-around performance on the verses spiked with an at once inspirational and regret-laden chorus. Throughout the album one can not only hear the expanded lineup testing things out, but individual players adding their own particular flair -- the brush-and-shuffle percussion from Morrison on "Five Words," McLennan's great lead guitar solo on "You've Never Lived," Vickers' ability with crisp funk on "Slow Slow Music." ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The Go-Betweens were already a good band well before they made Before Hollywood, but this second album is what proved for many listeners that they were great. For good reason -- both Robert Forster's and Grant McLennan's singing sounds much more honestly theirs, finding their own voices, while collectively the trio create a series of intricate, surprising melodies and songs which balance past and present beautifully. Strange as it may sound, the band's peers at this point could and did range from the Cure (for both melancholic intensity and guitar -- check some of the electric work on "Ask") to more obvious cohorts such as Orange Juice, but the Go-Betweens already had their own identity firmly established. For many the album's reputation rests on the presence of one song alone, and understandably so: "Cattle and Cane." Arguably the band's absolute highlight of its earliest years and one of the early-'80s' utter classics, the combination of McLennan's nostalgia-laden but not soppy lyric, his flat-out lovely singing and overdubbed backing vocals, and the catchy, beautifully elegant acoustic/electric arrangement is simply to die for. There are plenty of other songs that demonstrate the threesome's collective strength. "Two Steps Step Out" is a prime example, with sudden tempo shifts, from a more straightforward beat on the chorus to the sudden breakdown on the brisk chorus, and McLennan's lovelorn lyric and quietly impassioned singing making it an instant winner. Another McLennan winner is "Dusty in Here," soft piano from Bernard Clarke adding just enough to the spare but warm arrangement. Forster gets his own share of memorable moments, not least of which is the title track, not to mention the edgy, desperate "By Chance" and slightly calmer "On My Block." Lindy Morrison's abilities as a drummer are similarly improved, the at-times strident work of Send Me a Lullaby here replaced with a good balance between impact and steady swing. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
'Send Me a Lullaby'
What The Critics Say
The first official album from the Go-Betweens, after a slew of earlier recordings and initial singles, was described by Forster and McLennan in later years as sounding like a practice room session, "metallic folk in a way." It's a fair assessment, and certainly while it's the work of a young band, Send Me a Lullaby is still a promising start, showing that the original trio had an aesthetic and the talent to carry its work over an album's length. Another McLennan comment, that it's the 1981 version of the Pixies, is partially accurate -- there's no walls of feedback or screaming, but the songs are short, brisk, angular. The not-so-secret weapon, as one can imagine, is the singing of Forster and McLennan, investing even the sharpest songs and most cutting rhythms (check out the relentless rhythms of the art-funk "The Girls Have Moved") with a sometimes desperate and sometimes withdrawn emotion. At points the vocals are forced, as can also be heard on Very Quick on the Eye, but both are starting to audibly try out other approaches. As musicians, the three definitely had something of that 'metallic folk' thing about them, with Morrison's drumming adding a sometimes brusque but (except for part of "Eight Pictures") never brutal touch to the proceedings that holds up quite well. Forster's guitar work and McLennan's bass are both interesting to hear in context given how much of an influence they would exert in later years. Rather than sounding like they're trying to recodify rock and roll or the like, it's a series of often gentle explorations in restraint, saying more with less. There are definitely more thrashy numbers that live might well have completely rocked out -- "People Know," with its squirrelly guest saxophone from James Freud, is the most likely candidate of all. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
