Draining the POLL for you - ILM artist poll #98 - The Go-Betweens

Admittedly, fifth place doesn't seem enormously impressive at first glance. :) I should clarify that it was also a couple of places higher for much of the voting period. This cluster remains fairly tightly bunched.

I broadly agree with Tom D, though possibly not on the specific "godawful" tracks. Regardless of the finished product, some of their best songs arrived in 1984 (including my #1) and I get an awful, awful lot of mileage out of the associated obscurities and alt. takes on the expanded issue and G is for Go-Betweens.

I totally love Spring Hill Fair, side one has some of Forster’s catchiest work, and basically the whole thing made my tracks ballot

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#4
THE GO-BETWEENS - TALLULAH
June 1987

Points: 148
Votes: 22
First-place votes: 2

Right Here / You Tell Me / Someone Else's Wife / I Just Get Caught Out / Cut It Out // The House That Jack Kerouac Built / Bye Bye Pride / Spirit of a Vampyre / The Clarke Sisters / Hope Then Strife

"We were sort of cursed. We had the engineer that we were using on Liberty Belle, Dicky Preston, and working with Dicky was good. We then went on to the next one and we were put into this horrible studio it was over a practice room or something. And so Dicky didn't do a good job I think on Tallulah, so it had to be rescued and remixed a little but which always sounds horrible but it actually worked out okay with Mark Wallis." - RF

Youtube audio track: Someone Else's Wife

I'll deal with the top three when it's less middle-of-the-night for a lot of you.

Well I agree with the top 3

Tallulah gets off to a bad start for me. In another, simpler arrangement I'd like Right Here, but while Spring Rain or the whole of 16 Lovers Lane have a effortless pop sensibility to them, here it sounds contrived and trite. Then You Tell Me soars before the album loses its way again.

OTM re 'Right Here'. I thought I was virtually alone in not really feeling it. It was only relatively recently that I realised I was letting that (and the almost unbearable 'Cut it Out') distract me from the fact that almost everything else is excellent. (Did I already say something similar on the other thread? Probably.)

“Cut it Out” is pretty bad. Did find myself listening it to the other night and trying to imagine how it might have sounded when written, without the production. The issue is, though, that it’s a pretty weak song to begin with.

Yeah! Not sure McLennan had as many spare songs that time around but even the eminently b-side-ish "Don't Call Me Gone" seems to offer more durable building blocks to work with.

oceans apart was my number one - been totally enamoured with it for a couple of months now

Crazy talk re "Right Here". Again, I think Robert more than holds up his side of the bargain on this album, he has to as Grant saddles it with a couple more duds. Glossy 80s production doesn't help.

There's no album where the divide is starker to me: Robert's songs are good to great and I don't care for much for any of Grant's (last two are OK, I guess)

Been listening to the extra tracks on the 2004 bonus disc for the first time. Love the lighter yet no less unsettling 'If I Was a Rich Man' version of The House Jack Kerouac Built, a song I think I've been underappreciating

Tallulah my #1 narrowly over Rachel Worth. The only song I don't like on Tallulah is "Cut It Out" and I may have voted for every other song on it.

Definitely my fave despite not being too wild about Cut It Out and Someone Else's Wife

They were fantastic live during the 'Tallulah' tour, with Amanda Brown really filling out the sound well. So my votes for the 'Tallulah' tracks are more for the way they sounded on that tour, especially 'Right Here'. 'Tallulah' was, however, the album that surprised me most (in a positive way) when I re-listened to it for the poll.

I think I had the most negative reaction to Tallulah when I first picked up all the '80s albums in the early-to-mid-'90s. It somehow sounded more dated 5 years after release than it does now. "Bye Bye Pride" was the obvious exception but I was already well acquainted with that bit of greatness. These days I'm way more likely to reach for it than 16LL. The track I rated most highly for this exercise was "The Clarke Sisters", apparently.

I didn't anticipate that "Someone Else's Wife" would keep coming up as a low-point. It's firmly in the McLennan Contributions That Don't Suck column by my reckoning, alongside "Hope and Strife".

Of course, since commenting on "Cut It Out" earlier it's been lodged in my head and I'm almost beginning to like it.

Hehe.

Probably time to post more results, innit...

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#3
THE GO-BETWEENS - 16 LOVERS LANE
August 1988

Points: 157
Votes: 20
First-place votes: 4

Love Goes On / Quiet Heart / Love Is a Sign / You Can't Say No Forever / The Devil's Eye // Streets of Your Town / Clouds / Was There Anything I Could Do? / I'm All Right / Dive for Your Memory

"I had trouble with 16 Lovers Lane for a long time. It wasn't until the late nineties that I recognised it for what it was - a pop record." - RF

Youtube audio track: The Devil's Eye

Oh, that's a surprise, I thought Top 2 for sure.

Yeah expected that to win. Really pleased it didn't.

This album is an odd one because I always think I don't like it very much until I listen to it and realize I do like it, I do. I think, next to "Before Hollywood", it's the best, more perfect, sounding 'classic era' album. However, Grant goes way over the top in places with the schmaltz, in a way I find bordering on the unlistenable. Robert is reliably world weary and great.

'16LL' contains "Was There Anything I Could Do?" and "Dive For Your Memory", two of my favourite Go-Betweens songs.

Too lush for my tastes

I love how this album hangs together, the edges between the two songwriters blurred like they hadn't been since Before Hollywood. Love Goes On rushes all over you at the start (I should have put it on my ballot) and it never lets up from there. I get that some people (Tom D!) can find a song like Quiet Heart soppy but can't resist "Doesn't matter how far you've come / you've always got further to go" on a final, for then, album. One thing: I've always wondered if You Won't Find It Again was left off because it sounded too much like The Devil's Eye. I'd have swapped them if it'd been up to me.

16LL is the only of their albums i've ever really gotten into, certainly their most consistent and i love the breezy feel

Wow! Can’t believe four people left this off their TOP TEN?!

Other stray thoughts - for a long time I did not like Tulallah because of Someone Else’s Wife and Cut It Out being horrible. I thought it had two towering achievements in Right Here and Bye Bye Pride but not much else going for it, and the two worst Go-B’s songs. Now I kind of like Cut It Out and I definitely like every other song on there. Someone Else’s Wife still stinks.

To me it's unthinkable that You Won't Find It Again could have been left off any album

Haha. Really wondering about the repellent elements of "Someone Else’s Wife" that I'm apparently immune to. This is amazing. I guess some of the rhyming is less than brilliant, but otherwise...

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#2
THE GO-BETWEENS - BEFORE HOLLYWOOD
May 1983

Points: 161
Votes: 20
First-place votes: 5

A Bad Debt Follows You / Two Steps Step Out / Before Hollywood / Dusty in Here / Ask // Cattle and Cane / By Chance / As Long As That / On My Block / That Way

"We had to make a classic. Our first album was not a classic album, and you don’t know how many chances you’re going to get. We’d never really worked with a producer, and we talked with Geoff Travis about our fantasy candidates, people like Lindsey Buckingham and Robbie Robertson. But John Brand walked into our rehearsal room, taped us, then walked back the next day with the songs written out and with arrangement ideas; no one had ever done that with our music." - RF

Youtube audio track: Full vinyl rip

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#1
THE GO-BETWEENS - LIBERTY BELLE & THE BLACK DIAMOND EXPRESS
March 1986

Points: 202
Votes: 24
First-place votes: 10

Spring Rain / The Ghost and the Black Hat / The Wrong Road / To Reach Me / Twin Layers of Lightning // In the Core of the Flame / Head Full of Steam / Bow Down / Palm Sunday (On Board the SS Within) / Apology Accepted

"I rediscovered melody, linked to the way I wrote in the late ‘70s. On those first singles, I used to be the singles writer, and it was almost as if I’d forgotten that. But then, in the summer of 85, I wanted a pop sensibility again in what I did, And because the songs were a little bit slower, I had more room for lyrics. I could say things instead of that post-punk thing where it’s a yelp and a scream and a few words here and there. I could blurt out whole lines and get verses going. Lyrically, it was a lot richer." - RF

"There was quite a fundamental musical change in the band towards simplification. Something we've been accused of in the past, of being almost a pop band, almost an art band, you know, now we're simplifying. Thinking more of 4/4." - GM

Youtube audio track: Complete tracklist

Excellent! Thanks for the roll-out. The six original albums ended up almost in the same order I had them, just Talullah and Spring Hill Fair swapping places.

Damn liberty belle was my number five, pretty shocked it beat out BH

Before Hollywood was my no. 1, it's the most sympathetic production they ever got, songs great, singing great, playing great, arrangements great. Liberty Belle has great songs but, I don't know, has a sort of dull sound.

Haha. Really wondering about the repellent elements of "Someone Else’s Wife" that I'm apparently immune to. This is amazing. I guess some of the rhyming is less than brilliant, but otherwise...

Nothing to do with the lyrics, it's just a feeble, dreary song, that chorus is a total clunker.

Liberty Belle was the only album to make it on to every ballot.

Yes, won comfortably!

I'd love to hear more from the four people who didn't vote for Before Hollywood in their top 10.

Liberty Belle was well in the lead all along too. From my very first peek at the totals, with 5 ballots or whatever.

Before Hollywood was always going to be my #1. I didn't even re-listen until right now. Tom D OTM, up there! ^

BH is the only album where GM outperforms RF imo. I really like how his songs seem to have been written on bass guitar.

Yeah, that's probably true. Meanwhile Forster's are sort of SMAL done better, or at least tighter and sweeter.

Okay, let's turn to the solo/side-projects tracks next. But not until late Sunday/Monday.

I'll try to maintain a brisk pace and a leaner rollout, so as not to get bogged down too much.

Still prefer Tallulah ("Someone Else's Wife" is a melodic and lyrical highpoint for McLennan), but Liberty Belle works for me.

btw do I have to derail this thread with my objections to "dated" as a pejorative? All albums are dated the moment they're recorded. I don't get why Liberty Belle is less "dated" than Tallulah.

Doesn't bother me. Some things have more noticeable artefacts of their age than others (from the standpoint of the listener). If you like those artefacts, you can call something 'a classic 80s sound' or whatever. If you don't, you can call them dated.

totally baffled about the outcome. i would have bet a lot on 16LL as a winner. just relistening to LBATBD and it definitely has its moments - like "twin layers of lightning" - but i don't feel it like 16LL which gives me a kick from the beginning on. it does what i love about pop music, it marries melancholy with melody. LBATBD on the other hand drags along in places. especially the succession of "head full of steam", "bow down" and "palm sunday" totally passes me by. my life is too short to listen to them again.

I don't like the production on Send Me A Lullaby much, but 'dated' isn't a word that comes to mind when thinking about it in the way it does with Tallulah. Something must account for that difference.

xpost

Liberty Belle is rarely the first album of theirs I pull off the shelf, but I'm never not satiated by it.

Yeah, you're right, Alfred. I've had similar thoughts about "dated" myself. When I used it before, in my head it would have been shorthand for "marked by certain quite specific trends in music production associated, in my mind at least, with 1987, like thin metronomic rhythm tracks, mainly where Craig Leon was involved."