The Go-Betweens - what's it all about?

what a song

On this video of “Head Full of Steam” looks like Amanda is playing a violin through an effect to make it sound like an oboe or something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuuqJGLgjXw

The official video for “Head Full of Steam” is, um, interesting.

Enjoyed recently discovering the cover of “Bachelor Kisses” by The Radio Dept.

Okay, got the book and have been reading over the weekend and have to say Alfred, as is the case more often than not, is right: it is one of the better rock memoirs. It hits the sweet spot of telling you stuff you wanted to know along with things you didn't think to ask about and seems to avoid, as far as I can tell as far as I have read, some of the obvious traps- score settling, evasion, meaningless digression or page-filling, embarrassing defensiveness, reinterpretation or misinterpretation regarding the author's own work. He is careful and cagey in describing Grant, playing one card at a time, interested to see what will be revealed as I get further along in the story.

Yes, Forster is a writer: he doesn't insist on proving a thesis. What he has to share about his best friend he will do in a leisurely manner after he has limned scenarios.

He seems to be one of the few people besides myself who likes the Bryan Ferry record Dylanesque. I will have to reread his piece on that and reflect.

Read through to end this weekend. Did not disappoint

second box set is definitely happening -Robert mentioned it at a London book launch/concert thing late last year

Thanks Jamie!

I'd been meaning to read the book for a while, so I just bought it. No library in our multi-library system had a copy!

Listening to Oceans Apart a lot, and to the '78-'90 comp. "Born to a Family" and "Second Hand Furniture." Oceans, with all its interesting feints and digressions, is the realization of their super-MOR Glen Campbell- John Phillips-Jimmy Webb concept. Only comparable fairly recent album I can think of is Freedy Johnston's similarly Webb-ian Neon Repairman.

Hmm, never really thought of that album as particular MOR in style. Anyway, "Finding You" is a beaut. That and "The Clock" are total late-era Grant keepers, though all three comeback albums are strong in their own ways, with the former two charmingly tentative (in a sense) and the last one totally assertive in its swing-for-the-fences confidence.

super-MOR Glen Campbell- John Phillips-Jimmy Webb

OTM

Oceans Apart is their great record, after several excellent ones.

Oceans Apart is excellent but it's also a disappointingly bad master. This was the album that led me to learn more about the "loudness wars". I remembering reading that Yep Roc were considering a remaster but saw nothing further. Did this ever happen?

It did. I bought the remastered version (after trading in the original) and it does indeed sound better.

Lomax also made replacement discs but I never got around to requesting one.

Downy Mildew: Classic or Mold Spore

Hi! We're from Downy Mildew! And we've got a new album out called Mincing Steps!
This is all I know of them. Hilarious, nonetheless.

― Ally C, Wednesday, February 20, 2002 8:00 PM (fifteen years ago)

The above being a quote from Live On Snap, which I prefer somewhat to That Striped Sunlight Sound.

Have to see it took me ages to get into this band originally because I was put off by the post-punk yelping on the first album. Now I have changed my tune and am in completely in awe of the, um, fecundity and longevity of their creative partnership.

The Go-Betweens, that is, not Downy Mildew

The first album works in its way. The bass playing is enthusiastic and amazingly good for someone who apparently hadn't done it before. Just listened to it the other day and it's actually full of great ideas that are executed with a certain flair. In the post-Beefheart sweepstakes that record and all their stuff is a pretty amazing thing to contemplate, altho I also listened to "Just a King in Mirrors" the other day, and that's one of their best Velvets rips. The guitar obbligato in "Second Hand Furniture" is very Beefheart. Not that it may have been intentional. The non-idiomatic idioms are so fucking elusive somehow even when they play funk in the song that goes "they're taking heaven away" it's not quite like Pylon or Gang of Four at the same time, or even Pavement later, though lots of similarities.

All well and good but what about the first album, Send Me A Lullaby?

not very good

But yeah, the Beefheart similarity you point out is useful to contemplate.

It's not as good as Before Hollywood etc but I also don't think it's a bad record. I suppose technically I would agree it's not very good, it's just good.

Mind you I absolutely love the Lost Album stuff, so maybe the early stuff is just more to my tastes. I don't think Send Me A Lullaby is as good as the Lost Album though.

Me neither

As a piece of music the first album is quite good and as a collection of songs it's just not done with enough skill, so I don't think it's bad at all. Get a little band together with a good bassist and do that stuff now with a couple of singers who enunciate a bit more and can put those words across, that record would come alive like a Pylon dance party or something.

The singing is pretty bad on Send Me A Lullaby. Plus the songs are trying too hard to be all angular and post-punk, something they didn't completely shake off till 16 Lovers Lane.

... I like them angular and awkward but they weren't very good at it that stage, apart from Lindy, who was easily the best musician in the band.

I'm not keen on their pre-Before Hollywood stuff. I agree with Tom D; they were aiming for an angularity that they weren't proficient enough to pull off

I think the tension between the sprung-rhythm aspect of their style (and their fairly amazingly unobtrusive use of the 3/4-/4/4 tension thruout) and the Guy Van Zandt-Towne Clark Parsons aspect of their songwriting is what makes Spring Hill Fair unique and probably their best album overall if Tallulah isn't. Esp. on the versions of the material from around then that ended up on the box, "Part Company" and "Heaven Says" and "Rare Breed." I think they moving toward straight rock or singer-songwriter rock on all their early records, actually, apart from the first one, certainly by Liberty Belle it's just more straightforward and more attuned to normal rock dynamics, I guess.

For me the best of the original run are Tallulah and Liberty Belle. Do you still dislike the bridge of “Bachelor Kisses,” Alfred? The Radio Dept. cover I recently mentioned seems to dispense with it.

Oceans, um, flows so nicely, and seems to have no clunkers or clunky moments and still has some of their best songs so I am leaning towards agreeing with Alfred that it is the best overall.

Go-Betweens are my favorite band ever, and Oceans Apart is my least favorite album of theirs! The mastering is truly horrendous. It's so choked.

Similar to the recent XTC poll, a tracks poll would be pretty interesting as they changed so much over the years and there doesn't seem to be a consensus among die-hards. I know people who only like the Lost Album stuff, other people who only like the post-punk/angular crazier zone, and other people who only like the swooning, lush straight-forward stuff, and even people who only like the second-wave albums.

Worse than BYBO or Send Me a Lullaby?

at any rate the remastering problem was solved

I struggle to rank the recordings but I can say that I almost never feel any need to revisit Oceans Apart or BYBO.

Not all of Lullaby works but I've listened to it an awful lot over the decades. I'm very forgiving when things are so odd rhythmically.

For me BYBO and Lullaby are the other two in the "weak tier", but Oceans is the weakest for me. I do actually like all of them though!

Is the mastering fixed on Spotify? Get a load of that bridge on Finding You! Sounds like a FM radio station broadcasting a recording of another FM radio station.

Lavender is the only weak spot on Oceans Apart for me. Finding You, Born To A Family, The Statue and This Night's For You are some of my favourite Go-Betweens moments. Bright Yellow Bright Orange is by far the weakest of the reunion releases, but it's still a really solid listen. Send Me A Lullaby is their only below average release. It's surprising really as most of those early singles around the same time were great, especially Hammer The Hammer and I Need Two Heads.

Ongoing amazement that "This Night's For You" hasn't been licensed for every beer commercial on TV. Basically the Lowenbrau theme x 1000.

BYOB's problem, I told Forster when I interviewed him in 2006, was the self-production wasn't up to the band's increasingly ornate arrangement ideas. They'd regained their confidence and needed a producer up to the task.

i've been wanting to buy Oceans Apart but now i'm a little gunshy, don't want to wind up with the first version. sounds like the remaster was out only a few months after the initial version?

we'll create an ad hoc listening committee for you

i expect a report on my desk by Friday

BYOB's problem, I told Forster when I interviewed him in 2006, was the self-production wasn't up to the band's increasingly ornate arrangement ideas. They'd regained their confidence and needed a producer up to the task

I'm sure he appreciated your input and took it into account

Oceans Apart still sounds like shit on Spotify, notably the digital distortion on the chorus to This Night's For You. I'd otherwise rep for this album being top 3 GoBs but no, the lousy mastering is just too deflating.

He did mention in hus memoir how dull BYBO sounded.

Xpost

Oceans Apart still sounds like shit on Spotify, notably the digital distortion on the chorus to This Night's For You. I'd otherwise rep for this album being top 3 GoBs but no, the lousy mastering is just too deflating.

― doug watson,

I still own the original shit version, still love it. I've never let shitty mixing affect my enjoyment; it's the songs. That same year Sleater Kinney released a similarly shit-sounding album that happened to be mediocre because half the tunes were retreads.