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

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.

All this Before HoIlywood talk is making me feel like a Go-Betweens tourist. I got started with the 78-90 comp, filled in 16LL, Liberty Belle and Tallulah but never went back to BH. So, hand up, I’m one of the 4 voters who didn’t rank BH.

Speaking of bad album cover art, that 78-90 comp really takes the cake. Every time I pull that one off the shelf, I wonder how they could have collectively decided: "Yep, that image is perfect for our career retrospective".

Also, looks like I was the only "Metal & Shell" voter, which is fair enough, since it's both US-only and a compilation album.
But, it was my first exposure to the band, and I like better than either of the albums it combines (BH and SHF), so I couldn't resist.

One might almost use the d-word in relation to the 78-90 graphics. Feels distinctly turn-of-the-nineties.

I'll make a tiny start of the next section. Just a wee off-peak taster, to help ensure we get finished before Xmas...

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#40
GRANT MCLENNAN - Put You Down
from Horsebreaker Star (1994)
Points: 47
Votes: 2 (0)

Youtube audio

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#38
ROBERT FORSTER - Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgement
from Inferno (2019)

Points: 50
Votes: 3 (0)

Youtube audio

______

#39
ROBERT FORSTER - Life Has Turned a Page
from Inferno (2019)

Points: 49
Votes: 3 (0)

Youtube audio

#37
ROBERT FORSTER - Don't Touch Anything
from The Evangelist (2008)

Points: 51
Votes: 2 (0)

Youtube audio

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#36
ROBERT FORSTER - 121
from Calling From a Country Phone (1993)

Points: 51
Votes: 3 (0)

Youtube audio

That's enough for now. :)

The parenthetical bit is the number of first-place votes from now on.

I've also used total votes, then total first-place votes, as tiebreakers.

Nice to see a couple of Inferno tracks make it. I voted for both of them.

I don't think I'll ever understand the enduring popularity of Christgau's reviews.

That review is concise, snappy and enjoyably pretentious. It gives a good impression of what the record might sound like, without any indication of the writer's taste, and has a letter grade that reassures you of its quality despite said taste. it does a lot of work in a handful of words.

...if you can make it past the first line, which is nonsensical and has no relation whatever to the band or their music.

I think the ranking of the two Inferno tracks is the wrong way around, unless the points totals are in error.

Life Has Turned a Page one of those great late Robert as narrator songs. I prefer it to Darlinghurst Nights.

Don't Touch Anything near the top of my ballot. A song of so much pent-up power.