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

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."

I can't imagine being a fan but not wanting to hear Bow Down or Head Full of Steam again. They are totally swoonsome, totally marrying melancholy with melody, and top 10 tracks for me. It's a strange world, Sandy.

but nobody uses "dated" about Rickenbackers recorded in 1966 -- it's always synths and gated drums

I'll bet you they did the 70s.

Sure, but I guess the sound of Rickenbackers recorded in 1966 has passed into what's widely classed as agreeable and classic (though I bet if you asked younger people not into the rock canon they might well use the word or just say it sounds 'old'). People do talk about dated lyrics from that era though.

xpost - ha, yes

I remember writing a review along these lines on rateyourmusic in response to the countless existing reviews of Steve McQueen containing "dated". I've become everything I used to hate! :)

Full results, for stats fans, before I move on and forget...

                                                            Pts  Votes    #1s
 1  Liberty Belle & the Black Diamond Express               202     24     10
 2  Before Hollywood                                        161     20      5
 3  16 Lovers Lane                                          157     20      4
 4  Tallulah                                                148     22      2
 5  Spring Hill Fair                                        146     23      0
 6  Oceans Apart                                            103     18      2
 7  The Friends of Rachel Worth                              90     16      0
 8  The Evangelist                                           68     14      0
 9  Danger In the Past                                       34      9      0
10  Send Me a Lullaby                                        24      6      0
11  Horsebreaker Star                                        22      7      0
12  78 'TIl 79: The Lost Album                               12      4      0
13  Metal and Shells                                         10      1      1
14  Bright Yellow Bright Orange                               7      3      0
15  Songs To Play                                             6      3      0
16  In Your Bright Ray                                        6      2      0
17  Watershed                                                 5      2      0
18  Calling From a Country Phone                              4      1      0
19  I Had a New York Girlfriend                               3      2      0
20  Inferno                                                   2      2      0
21  Fireboy                                                   1      1      0

Warm Nights = nul points!

And I was all alone with ...Country Phone. *weeps*

Big shout out to the other person who voted for I Had A New York Girlfriend. Forster described the collection of cover versions as "the one mistake of my recording career", but it's a great album to relax to with a glass of wine in your hand. He interprets other people's songs with the same degree of empathy with which he writes about them as a journalist, and the band (including Mick Harvey, Warren Ellis, Clare Moore, Conway Savage & 'Evil' Graham Lee) are strong too.

Quite happy with the results of the album poll - thought 16LL would walk it.

My favourite is Before Hollywood, but Liberty Belle sounds to me a bit like BH recorded on a rainy day. It's the best balance between the classic era's idiosyncratic and pop halves, so it makes sense as a winner.

Based on the trend of earlier posted opinions, I expected Before Hollywood to win over 16LL. I'm surprised that Liberty Belle took it, although it got my #1 spot. It was the first GB album I ever heard, and it instantly made me a fan of the band. If I had heard BH first, it might have become my all-time fave, but it took me another 10 years to get to it. I love how BH combines their idiosyncratic group personality with post-punk nervouosness and intensity. And the flow of BH's sequencing is just breathtaking.

Iirc those beggars reissues sleaves could be turned inside out to display the proper album cover.

I voted Before Hollywood high as an album but I picked relatively few songs from it (well, my #1). It flows marvelously.