This Week On The Philebrity Player: The Greatest Album The Go-Betweens Never Made
How long have we been loving The Go-Betweens? Too long to stop now. For the uninitiated, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan started The Go-Betweens in 1977 in Brisbane, Australia, a beachy backwater that seemed to be receiving high-bandwidth telepathic communications from the New York and London punk scenes at the time. Throughout the 80s, they made a string of post-punk pop albums that grew to a shining, shimmering peak. They signed to Sire Records the same week as Madonna. They were Molly Ringwald’s favorite band. (Seriously. We read it in Smash Hits circa 1986.) And lo, it was good.
But come 1989, after a string of near-hits, tons of touring and in-band love dramas, the band called it quits. For both McLennan and Forster, a string of solo albums came, and it’s from these — all recently reissued individually as well as compiled on the Intermission compilations — that today we cull something we’re calling The Greatest Album The Go-Betweens Never Made. The band got back together in 2000, and made three more albums before Grant McLennan passed in 2006.
Through the good graces of Beggars Banquet, we’ve surveyed both Intermission albums and come up with a ten-track mixtape that could have served as The Go-Between’s lone album in the 1990s. It would have been a great one. Working seperately throughout the decade, Forster and McLennan delved deep into romance and reflection in different ways: McLennan made wind-swept pop that was bittersweet and grand, and Forster’s records were stately yet eccentric, like Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave after a few brandys. (Sure enough, Forster enlisted members of The Bad Seeds for his first solo record, Danger In The Past.) All of these albums were postively alive with wine, women and song — and also maybe a little bit of surf. And going over these tracks over the past few weeks, it’s wild to us how in the right combination, they make the summeriest album we’ve heard in a while. And certainly the greatest album The Go-Betweens never made.
Click here to launch The Greatest Album The Go-Betweens Never Made on The Philebrity Player!
August 14th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Aw man, thanks.
Fun facts for all you pop-pickers:
Grant and Robert were in a bad with Nick Cave in the late 70s called the Tuff Monks! They released one excellent single and have a very good name!
Robert did an album of covers in the 1990s that according to a Chickfactor interview I have memorized he says he wished never existed!
In this month’s issue of Australia’s ‘Monthly’ magazine Robert said Meg Baird’s Dear Companion is his fave album of the year! And he loves Espers too!
Joey Sweeney can play 90% of the Go-Betweens back catalogue on guitar! And he can sing as either Grant or Robert depending on the vocal range of who he’s playing them with!
Enjoy this rock!
August 14th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi!