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

... 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.

I envy your tolerance of overly loud mastering.

where can we stream the doc btw?

Oceans Apart is great. Sadly, as it's Grant's last recorded work, I think Robert is strongest here. Grant's tracks stray a little too close to the middle of the road for my taste. Whereas Robert comes out with all cylinders firing on Here Comes A City. And I have a particular soft spot for Darlinghurst Nights, as I was living in Darlinghurst at the same time as they were and I'd see them round. I even know what restaurant Robert means when he's talking about gut-rot cappuccino and spaghetti...

Forster has been the strongest writer since 1988, but McLennan rose to the challeneg in OA.

The Statue is my favourite Go-Betweens song.

ABC (Aus) is streaming the documentary for another week or so, though one might need to convince the server you're in Australia.

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/go-betweens-right-here/

just for info that ABC link is actually a 60min TV cutdown of the full doco which is about 90 minutes

what got lopped i have no idea

Oceans Apart is definitely a Top 3 Go-Betweens LP for me

XP: re 60 vs 90 minutes, there is (or was) a good half an hour of 'extras' on the site too, in maybe ten installments, which may or may or not make up the balance.

I just dug out BYBO and OA for reappraisal while driving. Perhaps today is the day they become adorable.

any reason why a few but not all of their albums are on spotify? were they all on different labels originally?

Been on a BYBO binge recently, have grown to love it as much as any other GBs album with the exception of the peerless Liberty Belle. I think it's a better record than this thread would have you believe.

I have been digging it as well and concur that it is being undersold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P5ymx-Iz5k

^ Gosh! I must only have heard the other Peel session.

BYBO *is* good! I listened to it several times this week. The overall sound of it is preferable to Oceans Apart, I think, whereas I would initially have agreed that it seemed a tad under-cooked.

I've been reading Forster's book, and not only is it extremely well written but it's making me think about the band in ways I've never really thought about before. That's partly because of how mysterious I've always found the Go-Betweens, which in the past made me as wary of revelations as leaning in too close to pick out discernible song meanings and specific lyrics - too special for scrutiny. All I know is that playing the band's albums on shuffle right now, it's kind of unbearable, especially those songs like "Spring Rain," "Cattle and Cane," Finding You" and "Clouds" (to name four songs shuffle has just given me in succession) that are almost too pretty for words.

god "Finding You" and "Clouds"

The Go-Betweens is also one of the few bands which got back together years later (well Robert and Grant did in any case) and produced stuff that is as good as their earlier incarnation.

Wishing Glen Campbell had done "No Reason to Cry." Forster says it could've happened--did Julian Raymond play it for Glen? Who had just come in from the golf course?

Finished the book, which handles Grant's death in a really touching way. Something that surprised me - and I must admit to being attuned to this since the conspicuous exclusions in the Tom Petty bio(s) - is that there is very little specific stuff about substance abuse until the end, when Robert admits to casual needle use as the source of his Hep C. Apparently heroin (assuming that's what it was) abounded in the Aussie underground scene, maybe more than in most places - everyone from Nick Cave to Steve Kilbey to Paul Kelly (!) had heroin problems - but what surprised me is that I thought it was *Grant* who had been a longtime heroin user. But the book never brings it up at all, despite painting him as a pretty serious drinker, implied to be his excess of choice (though the book never blames alcohol for bad behavior or anything, just as a health concern, which indeed implies some heavy drinking). I guess I don't mind the missing bits, it's just curious.

the anecdotes about McLennan nursing huge Long Island iced teas were depressing

There's a lot about him left (intentionally I think) vague. Plus revelations that, for example, Robert only met Grant's mom once before his funeral, and that Grant's mom never saw the band perform.

Robert does hint at his own excesses throughout, with the quiet admission toward the end that in the scheme of things he was just another "bad" boy, a bad influence, that Grant hung around. But at one point Robert does say something about having been sober for a week. No casual drinker would ever tout their weeklong sobriety except someone for whom that stands as an exception to the rule.

everyone from Nick Cave to Steve Kilbey to Paul Kelly (!) had heroin problems

Cave was in Berlin and London, Kilbey was in Sydney, and Kelly (in Melbourne) didn't have problems until he'd been using occasionally for two decades, at which point he gave up for good.

(By Kilbey's accounts, McLennan never had a problem either, which leaves a grand total of zero examples cited in the Australian underground, as Kilbey was a major-label charting artist. Kelly, too, for that matter.)

David Nichols (The Cannanes; author of a 90s book on the GBs) was amongst quite a few expressing frustration re Forster's vagueness on the heroine issue. eg. half of his review dealt with it:

https://www.theliftedbrow.com/liftedbrow/twin-layers-of-lightning-a-review-of-robert

Kilbey spoke at some length in last year's documentary (or more likely the extra material, come to think of it) about them both using after McLennan introduced him to opiates. I think he said that McLennan mocked him for falling more deeply into dependence, such that the friendship disintegrated.

xpost Fine. A few semi-popular Australian peers of Forster/McLennan, then.

xpost Hmm, yeah, that Nichols review gets at my objections. Re: what I said before, I was absolutely shocked when that third Tom Petty bio came out, after a 4 hour movie and another interview book, only to finally learn that not only was he into heroin, it was a serious problem for a while - in the '90s, no less. How could that have been omitted? Similar to when I saw the Paul Kelly doc and learned of his own use. As someone who more or less only knows about heroin from accounts like these, neither artist struck me as the type I associated with the drug (almost always in the Keith/Iggy, er, vein), and while I chalk that up to my own naiveté (esp. since I know regular folks who have died or gone to jail related to heroin), it was still eye-opening to learn about Forster/McLennan.

It seems reasonable that Forster chooses to focus on his artistic partner's art, vs what he might see as gossip -- especially as McLennan's main heroin period was when they were estranged? Perhaps the specific area of various health-neglects that ended his life isn't directly known, too, and thus even less relevant.



(I'm sure there was plenty of heroin use in the underground btw! - but people living 16,000 km apart are not sharing dealers, and the sheer cost of drugs in Australia, combined with the scantier opportunities to earn money as a musician, make it likely to be used less than in other continents-lumped-together-as-a-scene. if someone OCRs Blunt I'll do a ctrl+f.)

My (by no means first-hand) understanding was that heroin, particularly, was cheap and of high quality in the early to mid 1990s Australia, which coincides with the time period under discussion. It was coming in from South-East Asia, not that far away (whereas the American junk was coming from Afghanistan iirc).

I was living in inner-city Sydney in the late 80s/early 90s, in social circles that (very slightly) overlapped with those of the Go-Betweens. I can confirm that the scene was awash with drugs! Although by that time, I'd say everyone was off their faces on ecstasy rather than heroin.

McLennan did allegedly develop a taste for certain substances while hanging with The Birthday Party during either the Melbourne period (circa Send Me A Lullaby and Tuff Monks collaboration) or in shared London accommodation. They may well have shared sources at various times!

I can't comment on the relative incidence or the precise patterns of heroin usage but if you add the likes of David McComb (The Triffids) and Tim Hemensley (God, etc) -- both dead in their 30s -- the list certainly gets more depressing the longer one dwells on the matter.