Rockbites: The Go-Betweens come back home on new record

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The Go-Betweens come back home on new record
17 February 2003

Three years on from a successful record born in the US Northwest, The Go-Betweens return to Australia, and to their musical essence, for their next album.

Australian outsider pop legends The Go-Betweens were an uncompromisingly arty ’80s band that, according to critics and fans alike, not enough folks heard. They were also the once and future vehicle for a creative core of two friends and songwriters—Robert Forster and Grant McLennan—who never stopped making music.
    The dissolution of The Go-Betweens in 1989 was just the start of Forster’s and McLennan’s individual careers. Each produced a string of stunning solo albums, all worth owning, IMHO, while the pair continued through the ’90s to collaborate on stage. They put on a world tour as a duo in 1999 that, besides bringing them their largest live audiences to date, ended a 12 year recording hiatus when it led to plans for a new Go-Betweens album.
    Forster recently spoke about their comeback as a recording team, which so far has included the very fine 2000 LP The Friends Of Rachel Worth (which featured members of Sleater-Kinney and Quasi) and, coming out today for the US on Jetset and yesterday for the UK on Circus, a new studio album called Bright Yellow Bright Orange. “For Grant and I, we always knew we were going to do more, that this [reunion] would become another body of work. We knew we weren’t coming back for some glorified one-off and then just go.”
    The Go-Betweens, a very solid quartet on the new album, are Forster & McLennan sharing songwriting and vocal duties, with all four players trading off on instruments. Bassist Adele Pickvance (who played on Rachel Worth and on various Forster and McLennan solo works) also sings and plays keyboards. Australian solo artist and graphic designer Glenn Thompson plays drums for the band, but on the new LP plays guitar and keyboards, and sings as well. Forster and McClennan each play acoustic and electric guitar.
    I admit to bias: I don’t think The Go-Betweens can make a bad record. Even so, Bright Yellow Bright Orange stands apart, its best feature its delicious musical coherence, making it one of the best Australian pop records... ever. Rachel Worth sounded in moments like The Go-Betweens putting on their impression of late ’90s US indie pop... at the expense of their unique and quirky vision. A bitter melody would give way, seemingly on directorial cue, to a sweet chorus. Rachel Worth is a great pop album, but it doesn’t snag my heart, as only truth can.
    On Bright Yellow Bright Orange, recorded over two weeks in Melbourne and Sydney last summer, we have, gloriously, the essential Go-Betweens finding themselves and their muse. Simply staying true to themselves, Forster & McLennan have beat “the curse of rock musician fogeyism,” as former bandmate Robert Vickers recently put it. Ah, they’re younger than that now.
    Forster says, “I have great affection for Rachel Worth, but this is a more confident record. It’s more entwined and it’s a record that goes out and greets the world a little more.” McLennan adds, “I’m not saying it is the best. I’ll leave that to critics and the fans, but I am saying this is my favorite. Our writing has never been better, and we’re collaborating in some very new and exciting ways.”
    On album opener Caroline & I, twin staccatto guitars ramp up, haltingly, to the downbeat, and then we’re off down the road with an unlikely and poignant autobiographical love story. Everything snaps together—playing, mix, lyrics, melody, breaks. And, most wonderful of all, are the vocals.
    Here’s an odd notion. Only when the music on an album coalesces into a unique presence—something new under the sun—can vocalists feel inspired to outdo themselves. Well, in any case, I’m here to tell you that both Forster and McLennan outdo themselves on this LP, with masterful vocal performances that just disappear, the way a consummate actor, in the groove, doesn’t seem to be acting at all. And I guess they’re not.
    Bright Yellow Bright Orange is endlessly tasty, with just the right touch of Farfisa here, or just the perfect dash of harmony vocals there. And the lyrics walk that rock-and-roll knife edge between 'head' and 'heart,' between the ad-hoc and the poetic. On Crooked Lines, McLennan sings “Underneath the lightfields/ Near a wall of water/ You can put your head down here/ Forget all you fought for/ Gotta learn to give/ Gotta learn to live.”

Exclusive: download an ultra-high quality MP3 version of Bright Yellow Bright Orange album track Old Mexico... right here on Rockbites.
| The Go-Betweens on Jetset | | The Go-Betweens on Circus | | RealAudio streams for Bright Yellow Bright Orange | | Old Mexico (Rockbites exlusive MP3 - 11 MB) | | CD from Amazon.com | | Glenn Thompson | | top of page |

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