Robert Forster

Although commonly considered the darker, artier half of the creative force of <a href="spotify:artist:4HCubdy7diarb4KZo8etrq">the Go-Betweens</a> -- the <a href="spotify:artist:4x1nvY2FN8jxqAFA0DA02H">Lennon</a> to <a href="spotify:artist:7tfS18oUEffScrxryTgwyC">Grant McLennan</a>'s <a href="spotify:artist:4STHEaNw4mPZ2tzheohgXB">McCartney</a>, as it were -- singer, songwriter, and guitarist Robert Forster has a knack for crafty pop songs along with the brooding ballads he contributed to <a href="spotify:artist:4HCubdy7diarb4KZo8etrq">the Go-Betweens</a>' albums, while his solo career -- that began with 1990's Danger in the Past -- blended a healthy mix of both styles. By the time the '80s band reunited in 2000, Forster had issued three more solo albums, including the self-produced Calling from a Country Phone (1993). The band's reunion netted three critically acclaimed albums before <a href="spotify:artist:7tfS18oUEffScrxryTgwyC">McLennan</a>'s untimely death in 2006. Forster soldiered on as a music journalist and author, then resumed recording and releasing uniquely thoughtful and melodic solo albums that included 2008's <a href="spotify:artist:7tfS18oUEffScrxryTgwyC">McLennan</a>-haunted The Evangelist, 2015's rambling Songs to Play, and 2023's emotionally raw The Candle and the Flame, an album of songs about aging and life experiences informed in part by wife and musical partner Karin Bäumler's concurrent struggles with cancer.

Forster, a native of Brisbane, Australia, formed <a href="spotify:artist:4HCubdy7diarb4KZo8etrq">the Go-Betweens</a> with <a href="spotify:artist:7tfS18oUEffScrxryTgwyC">McLennan</a> at Queensland University in 1978. The duo kept the band going through six albums by nearly as many lineups, progressing from stark, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Factory+Records%22">Factory Records</a>-style art rock to the creamy commercial pop of their last album, 1990's 16 Lovers Lane. The group split up during the sessions for that album's follow-up, and Forster took the songs he had written for it and recorded them with fellow Australian expatriate <a href="spotify:artist:5RyAbJ3y4yw8EbDcRblB8S">Mick Harvey</a> (ex-<a href="spotify:artist:5I2hMUcztc6QbzkyLskdt4">Birthday Party</a>) in Berlin, with members of <a href="spotify:artist:1RM5gp0RFfjpJhCYFPB30p">Nick Cave</a>'s <a href="spotify:artist:4UXJsSlnKd7ltsrHebV79Q">Bad Seeds</a> in the backing group. A return to the bleak starkness of the early <a href="spotify:artist:4HCubdy7diarb4KZo8etrq">Go-Betweens</a>, 1990's Danger in the Past sounded like a creative rebirth for Forster, who had been disappointed with the slick sound of the last couple <a href="spotify:artist:4HCubdy7diarb4KZo8etrq">Go-Betweens</a> records.

If Danger in the Past was a stylistic cousin to <a href="spotify:artist:4HCubdy7diarb4KZo8etrq">the Go-Betweens</a>' Before Hollywood, then 1993's Calling from a Country Phone was the equivalent of the group's superb mid-period albums, like Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express. Largely ditching the uneasiness of Danger in the Past, the follow-up returned to the kind of quirky but richly melodic folk-rock that Forster does so well. During the sessions for that album, Forster began working on a set of covers, which was released the following year as I Had a New York Girlfriend. Reuniting with <a href="spotify:artist:5RyAbJ3y4yw8EbDcRblB8S">Harvey</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:4UXJsSlnKd7ltsrHebV79Q">the Bad Seeds</a>' Conway Savage, Forster completely reworked the songs in his own image, with the result that songs ranging from <a href="spotify:artist:34jw2BbxjoYalTp8cJFCPv">Heart</a>'s commercial schlock "Alone" to <a href="spotify:artist:5nWbdgU2jcFSbrPV7EAoLK">Martha & the Muffins</a>' new wave classic "Echo Beach" sound like Forster originals.

Released in 1996, Warm Nights continued Forster's artistic winning streak. Produced by Forster's old friend <a href="spotify:artist:5Qlt3zQ63Z99mNhuun0JAT">Edwyn Collins</a>, the album added strings and brass to Forster's songs and sounds, not unlike a lower-fi version of <a href="spotify:artist:4HCubdy7diarb4KZo8etrq">the Go-Betweens</a>' last two albums. The stripped-down production helped the songs immensely. At that point, Forster and <a href="spotify:artist:7tfS18oUEffScrxryTgwyC">McLennan</a> started working together again, first releasing the career-spanning compilation Bellavista Terrace and the primal '78 til '79: The Lost Album in late 1998, and then touring the U.S. and recording 2000's The Friends of Rachel Worth, the first new <a href="spotify:artist:4HCubdy7diarb4KZo8etrq">Go-Betweens</a> album in a decade. Two more albums and a concert DVD appeared from the reunited band before <a href="spotify:artist:7tfS18oUEffScrxryTgwyC">McLennan</a>'s death in 2006. Forster released his first solo project in nearly a dozen years, The Evangelist, in 2008, and it contained the last songs that he and <a href="spotify:artist:7tfS18oUEffScrxryTgwyC">McLennan</a> worked on together.

Although further material was not forthcoming, Forster remained busy during the late 2000s and into the 2010s. He produced albums by fellow Brisbane bands <a href="spotify:artist:2vMslr38eQQG3BS0gL4z4C">the John Steel Singers</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:1vNgKXy3PgeCS8GC0xIcjG">Halfway</a>; worked as a music critic for the Australian magazine The Monthly (and collected his writing in the book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll), and compiled the box set series G Stands for Go-Betweens. Finally, in September 2015, he released a new collection, Songs to Play, with help from Scott Bromiley and Luke McDonald of <a href="spotify:artist:2vMslr38eQQG3BS0gL4z4C">the John Steel Singers</a>. In 2016, Penguin finally published Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens, Forster's account of the long friendship and partnership with <a href="spotify:artist:7tfS18oUEffScrxryTgwyC">McLennan</a> that had been rumored to be in the works for nearly a decade. In 2018, Forster reunited with producer Victor Van Vugt in Berlin. He had been the engineer on Danger in the Past. Backed by a rock quartet, the energetic recording entitled Inferno comprised nine new songs, including a rendering of "Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgement," based on <a href="spotify:artist:6z99YIGDMuMBXrhiEjd5vQ">W.B. Yeats</a>' poem of the same name that he had first performed live in Dublin in 2013 at the poet's 150th birthday celebration. Inferno was issued by <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Tapete%22">Tapete</a> in early 2019. Forster's next album, The Candle and the Flame, consisted of nine songs that were mostly already written by the time of his wife Karin Bäumler's 2021 ovarian cancer diagnosis. Forster, Bäumler, and a host of other musicians, including their children Loretta and Louis, slowly tracked the songs over the course of six months as Bäumler underwent cancer treatment and as her health allowed. This sporadic schedule sometimes made for brief windows where sounds could be captured, so the album was built more around spontaneity and feel than technical precision. That approach worked well for what amounted to some of Forster's most personal songs, ones where he meditated on who he once was, the person he had grown into, and the family that had become so important to him as the years went by. The Candle and the Flame was released in February of 2023. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi