The Go-Betweens - draining the pool for you, 1984

"The album was named after an annual fair in Spring Hill, Queensland, suburb of Brisbane Grammar School, Robert Forster's high school. Some of the band had also lived there in the early eighties. Grant McLennan said of the title, "It was generally not that we were home sick, I think we just wanted to have, after Before Hollywood, which was so obviously an American kind of thing, a regional home-town thing." In another interview McLennan stated "we all lived there and the main reason was that in September, October of every year in Brisbane, there is, in Spring Hill, a fair, and as the album came out around then we thought it would be nice to have a parochial mention in a title because we hadn't done that for a long time."

Nada Surf - love goes on cover, 2010

"There's something about a band recording an album of covers that sends up a red flag in the minds of many listeners, as if the musicians are acknowledging they've run out of ideas and must sift through other folks' material in order to pad out their repertoire. This might seem particularly troubling to fans of Nada Surf, since their continued existence after the flash-in-the-pan success of "Popular" in 1996 has had so much to do with their growing strength as idiosyncratic pop songwriters, but for whatever reason, the group has chosen to interpret the work of 12 other acts on their sixth studio album, If I Had a Hi-Fi, and they've done it in a way that avoids sounding like a holding action."

The Go-Betweens - part company, 1984

"Forster later indicated in an interview that McLennan had told him that "Just a King in Mirrors" was about Nick Cave, whom he was close to at the time. Desperately broke at the time, Forster said, "A moment of brightness for me was writing the music for "Part Company", the strummed folkie chords setting up the possibility of telling a story, not a fragment."

The Go-Betweens - bachelor kisses, 1984

"Despite the efforts of producer John Brand to shine it up, Bachelor Kisses is perhaps still too skeletal to have been a genuine commercial hit in 1984 (maybe a couple of years earlier it might have been a contender), but it remains one of the great treasures of the Go-Betweens’ catalogue." 

See also https://sintrabloguecintia.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-radio-dept-bachelor-kisses-cover.html. This is a fabulous cover version of this song by The Radio Dept. A dreamy and lo-fi cover, aligning with The Radio Dept.'s style.

The Go-Betweens - quiet heart live acoustic radio session, 1988

"At their peak, the Brisbane group featured Robert Forster, Grant McLennan, Lindy Morrison, Amanda Brown and Robert Vickers. Albums like Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express, Tallulah and 16 Lovers Lane are a sample of the band's brilliance."

The Go-Betweens - old mexico, 2003

"Even the Velvets inspired ‘Mrs Morgan’ has a muted sparkle to it. Forster’s ‘In Her Diary’ is particularly outstanding, the guitar lines and orchestration having a great resonance, while ‘Too Much of One Thing’ has quite a rush to it. The sound has rounded out, exemplified by ‘Old Mexico’ with its spiky guitar and keyboard intro together with its chorus’s melodic shift and Pickavance’s backing vocals adding an extra layer. ‘Something For Myself’ has Forster’s most enigmatic and unlikely observation, “want to get out folk and get into rare groove."

The Go-Betweens - make her day, 2003

"It's not every day that a reunion becomes a full-blown second phase for a band's career, but that seems to be what's happening with this old Australian outfit, even if principle songwriters Grant McLennan and Robert Forster are the only original members back in the fold. 2000's Friends of Rachel Worth found the duo picking up pretty much where the Go-Betweens left off in 1988, back when they were a steady five-piece operating far from their Brisbane home, in London, to massive critical acclaim and microscopic album sales. The post-punk charge that found its way into some of the band's early recordings is all but gone; the band focuses almost all of Bright Yellow Bright Orange (their eighth full-length) on their acoustic, folk-inflected side."

The Go-Betweens - right here, 1987

"the song is about two friends of his, who worked in a funeral parlour and the constant exposure to the chemicals used in the preparation of the bodies turned them into addicts. Stating "I thought this would be a good subject to write about in a pop song." The song's title is derived from the chorus of Forster's song "You've Never Lived" (Spring Hill Fair 1984)."

The Go-Betweens - quiet heart, 1988

"Grant in particular didn’t want to be part of a group any more. His three-year relationship with Amanda Brown had ended and he felt like making a clean break. Robert happily agreed."

The Go-Betweens - too much of one thing, 2003

"Fans of the Go-Betweens were happily amazed when Robert Forster and Grant McLennan reunited after 12 years and began recording again. This is the second product of their hopefully long-lived reunion. Recording in its native Australia, the duo added bassist and vocalist Adele Pickvance and drummer Glenn Thompson to the band for 2003's Bright Yellow Bright Orange. All the hallmarks of a great Go-Betweens record are here: memorable melodies, wry and literate (in Forster's case, literary) lyrics, Forster's dramatic vocals, and McLennan's sweet croon."

The Go-Betweens - love is a sign, 1988

"Forster’s “Love Is A Sign” is very Dylan, and a major grower."

The Go-Betweens - dive for your memory, 1988

“I maintain that The Go-Betweens write about love better than anybody else in the world.”

The Go-Betweens - the devil's eye, 1988

"Unbelievably brilliant, I think the whole album was incredible. Normally if you have an album with two singers and two writers, there's always one that you like better. Not in the case of The Go-Betweens, two equally talented guys, just like Lennon and McCartney."

The Go-Betweens - streets of your town, 1988

"Written by Grant McLennan, the sunny, upbeat music is contrasted with darker lyrics: "Don't the sun look good today but the rain is on its way, watch the butcher shine his knives, and this town is full of battered wives". McLennan said of writing the song, "I was listening to 'Under the Milky Way' and I was just working it out – cause I'm a big fan of The Church. And that afternoon I came up with a chord progression and a chorus." The song was written in McLennan and Amanda Brown's apartment in Bondi. Brown said, "It was written in, I would say, 10 minutes. I was singing along and I sung that "shine" line, which is like the call and response answer in the verses. And I don’t collect any songwriting royalties for that song, because that was a condition of my joining the band."

Grant McLennan - easy come easy go, 1991

"Watershed does have moments of glory and McLennan’s excellence in song writing, musicality and storytelling is as sharp as it ever was. The track Haunted House displays McLennan’s ability to create gentle and warm ambience in his music that is unmatched by many of his peers. Stones for You is another sweet ballad that talks of love in a kind and not so saccharine way that McLennan handles well. Black Mule is an odd tale that is slightly long but showcases McLennan’s ability to paint pictures and create worlds. One highlight is Haven’t I Been a Fool which is a more strident song which has a sharp degree of alacrity to it. It’s a poppy number that brings to attention the amalgamation of McLennan’s soft vocals and catchy musical refrains in perfect harmony. His main single Easy Come, Easy Go is another example of this but unlike Haven’t I Been a Fool, there is a sense of trying too hard to make this a hit single rather than just focusing on just making a good song."

Robert Forster - fortress, 1996

"It was about sweaty Brisbane nights, banana trees in the backyard, animals walking around at night, fruitbats flying in the air. I was looking at Brisbane with new eyes in this new suburb, and I was listening to this music that had more space, more rhythm. I wrote all the songs in about eight months, quicker than I had written since the late 70s."

Grant McLennan - horsebreaker star, 1994

"I wanted it to be the kind of record that could be played by anyone, but not too obvious. You know, the London Symphony Orchestra doesn't have to do the ballads, Johnny Cash doesn't have to do the country songs. I don't like to be that predictable. I like surprises"

The Go-Betweens - caroline and i, 2003

"David Nichols in his book, The Go-Betweens, considers that "'Caroline and I' is a light engaging study of the rather vague parallels between Robert Forster and Princess Caroline of Monaco, with an irresistible melody line rather similar to that of the Buzzcocks' 'Paradise'." The book also contains an interview with Forster, in which he states that he wrote the song in 1997, when he was living in Germany, saying "She meant a lot to me when I was between the ages of about fifteen and nineteen. She was a glamour figure. Obviously, from the lyrics, she was the same age as me. She was someone I felt attracted to..." "...[Caroline] was my age. I was attracted to her, and it was like we were living these two parallel lives. She went to university at the same time as I did. I went to Queensland University, she went to a university in Paris. It seemed that we were moving in the same direction." The Guardian's Betty Clarke comments "The heavy-hearted nostalgia of 'Caroline and I' is the song Lou Reed could have written if he had fallen for Brian Wilson, not David Bowie." The Undercover Review believes that the song is "reminiscent of that sound that has buried them into the psyche of every underground lover in this country and abroad. Such simple melodies thrown together with also simple, yet thought-provoking lyrics is often shrugged off as easy to create, but in reality even the most hardened avoider of trends will find this hard to resist." The Oz Music Project is not so complimentary however stating "the sinewy sunburst of Robert Forster's typically clean-channeled arpeggio riffs winding their way throughout, it is Forster-by-numbers; skewed, jangly pop with that wildly oscillating warble whorling around over the top. Like much of ‘Rachel Worth' it lacks the invention and passion that made the Go-Betweens such a joy in the first place."

The Go-Betweens - you won't find it again, 1988

“You Won’t Find It Again” was a great acoustic demo from McLennan that only appeared here, thank goodness. It served as a warning that I should really start investigating the Grant McLennan solo material that I haven’t really expended any energy in finding. I never really noticed the solo material when the band split, but this one showed that McLennan plus some acoustic guitar got across very well."

The Go-Betweens - bow down, 1986

"The shimmering “Bow Down” is Forster at his most gracious (“don’t you ever slow down”)"