Remembering singer/songwriter Grant McLennan on his birthday

Raising a glass to Grant McLennan on his birthday with a few Go-Betweens faves played with longtime pal Robert Forster. 

One For The Weekend: SnarskiCircusLindyBand feat. Lili Alaska

SnarksiCircusLindyBand is led by singer/guitarist Rob Snarski of the Black Eyed Susans and The Go-Betweens' Lindy Morrison. Check out "You're So Adorable"

Here's the scoop...

SnarskiCircusLindyBand – aka Rob Snarski (Black Eyed Susans), Lindy Morrison (The Go-Betweens), 'Evil' Graham Lee (The Triffids), Shane O'Mara (Rebecca's Empire, Chris Wilson, The Silversound), Dan Kelly (Paul Kelly, Dan Kelly & The Alpha Males) – are set to release their long-awaited debut album “what’s said and what’s left unsaid” this September via Tear Drop Records with pre-orders for vinyl and CD beginning today.

The album includes contributions from Amanda Brown (Go-Betweens), Jack Howard (Hunters & Collectors) & Romy Vager (RVG) 

“You’re So Adorable” the first single features lead vocals by French-Australian art pop indie enfant prodige Lili Alaska and is out today on all streaming platforms.

The new album available to pre-order from: 

https://robsnarski.bandcamp.com

https://robsnarski.com/shop

SnarskiCircusLindyBand – what's said and what's left unsaid

Finally, after two lovingly-received mini-albums (released on CD and digitally only), everybody's favourite indie all-star ensemble SnarskiCircusLindyBand is set to release its debut album “what’s said and what’s left unsaid”. This time around, the release will hit digital platforms, CD and vinyl.

Featuring five new songs and five songs from the earlier mini-albums, “what’s said and what’s left unsaid” will be released September 26. Live dates will follow.

The first taste of the new material, the single, "You’re So Adorable”, featuring guest lead vocals by French-Australian art pop indie enfant prodige Lili Alaska.

SCLB showcases the powerful songwriting collaboration between Rob Snarski and Lindy Morrison and boasts a formidable lineup of musical talent. Rob Snarski's evocative vocals weave through a rich tapestry of genres, from country-tinged ballads to post-punk-pop, bringing some deeply personal stories to life with gentle humour and beauty. 

Then there's Lindy Morrison’s iconic, idiosyncratic drumming, Graham Lee on his signature sweeping pedal steel, Shane O'Mara conjuring liquid mercury guitar and pop visionary Dan Kelly providing dynamic, melodic bass and the sweetest vocal harmonies.

In addition to the guest lead vocal on "You're So Adorable" by Lili Alaska, the album includes lead vocal and violin appearances from Amanda Brown (Go-Betweens) and a lead vocal from Romy Vager (RVG). Other pals Rebecca Barnard, Jodi Phillis, Jack Howard and Adam Hutterer provide vocal and instrumental performances. 

Cover photo 3D print on original image Geoffrey Titley and cover design Jarren Gallway.

Listen to "You're So Adorable" followed by a January performance in Sydney, Australia below. 

Robert Forster returns with new solo album "Strawberries"

Someone ate the entire bowl of strawberries that were meant to be shared and Robert Forster wrote a song about it. 

Robert Forster – Strawberries

Picture one of our greatest living singer-songwriters in a kitchen. He is on holidays, he's just had a swim. His wife is out on the beach, and he finds himself faced with a bowl of irresistible strawberries. They're meant to be shared, of course, but their taste is “out of the ordinary”, so he just can't help himself. Minutes later all of the delicious fruit are gone, but there's the germ of a song as the phrase “Someone ate all the strawberries” has just popped into Robert Forster's mind, sounding “so weird, but normal.” Thankfully, he has taken his guitar with him.

As the story goes, his wife Karin Bäumler not only forgave her husband, she actually joined him on a duet of what was to become the title song to his ninth solo album. “What can ordinary be?” is its wistful question, befitting the life's work of Robert Forster who has perfected the art of being outré in a least ostentatious way, from his time in the Go-Betweens to his solo career, now spanning almost three decades, interrupted only by the old band's reformation in 2000 which ended with his songwriting partner Grant McLennan's untimely death in 2006.

As that traumatic blow struck almost two decades ago, let's bring you up to speed: Since then, Robert Forster has maintained a solid career on his own terms through tireless touring, writing (the books Grant & I and The Ten Rules of Rock'n'Roll, a forthcoming novel) and recording. The Strawberries album – out Friday, May 23 via Tapete Records – follows a recent spate of deluxe reissues of four of his older solo albums as well as the 3rd and final volume of the career-spanning series of G Stands For Go-Betweens boxsets with a much awaited helping of new material. Next to admittedly bigger names such as Bob Dylan or Nick Cave, Robert Forster is the rare case of an artist with a celebrated past whose current work evokes genuine interest among a faithful fan base.

But back to our scene in the kitchen, to Robert, Karin, a guitar and an empty bowl: As a straight-up personal song, “Strawberries” is a bit of a red herring in the context of this new album that, unusually for Forster, deals almost exclusively in observational character studies or, as the author would have it, “story songs.”

“The last album was very personaI,” says Robert, “I didn't write anything for about a year after I'd finished 'She's a Fighter' for the last album. And then I just started to write songs that were something a little bit else. They just came naturally. I didn't really have a theme, it was just sort of lighter, a situation a little bit outside of myself. And I thought that was good. That was a place I could go to.

”The first song to point in this new direction was “All of the Time”, starting with the ominous couplet “There's propaganda and there's truth / And there's a feeling that I get when I'm with you”. We never quite learn what sinister plot lurks in the background, but these words combined with the subtle suggestion of a glam boogie groove imply a certain clandestine sexiness not usually associated with the Forster canon. “It was just this sort of language that I normally didn't use,” says the man himself, “It meant I wasn't going into my present situation. It just pushed me out there and made it less confessional. A lot more playful and and a lot more story-orientated as well.”

As it turns out, this storyteller who sees the world through the eyes of a film director, has a way with romantic fiction that is as emotionally involving as it is economical and free of all sentimentality, as showcased on “Breakfast on the Train”, the obvious centrepiece of the album. At almost eight minutes length, it tells the story of a not-so casual romance between the two odd ones out in a bar full of rugby fans who end up spending the night in a hotel, laconically retold with possibly the most perfectly timed use of the word “fuck” ever encountered in a pop song.

Inspired by an actual train journey through Scotland touring the previous album The Candle and the Flame with his musician son Louis, this epic is an indisputable addition to the pantheon of Robert Forster's best ever songs while “Foolish I Know”, a tender tale of unrequited same-sex attraction, has to rank amongst his bravest and most beautiful. Louis Forster, by the way, also makes an impressive appearance on lyrical lead guitar in “Such a Shame”, the moving story of an exhausted young rock star ending on the beautiful line “No one I've met has seen me yet at my best / No”.

As on most of the album, the narrator clearly isn't Forster himself, just as he's not the English teacher meeting a French woman in the album's bouncy opener “Tell it Back to Me”. “Your world so different to mine”, Forster sings, “I was corporate, you were folk.” Clearly, this relationship was never going to last, but then again, as Robert observes in the next song, it's “good to cry”. As his slapback echo vocals tuck into the rockabilly vibe of the song, you can hear Forster enjoying the company of his Swedish backing band: Producer Peter Morén (of Peter, Björn and John fame) on guitar, Jonas Thorell on bass and Magnus Olsson on drums, crucially augmented by Lina Langendorf on various woodwind instruments and Anna Åhman on keys.

The idea, writes Forster in his liner notes, was “to arrive in a town with a clutch of songs, to rehearse, record and mix an album with local musicians over a number of weeks, and then leave with the record done.” In this spirit, almost all of Strawberries was rehearsed and arranged to be tracked live, with very few overdubs, at Stockholm's INGRID studios. Forster and Morén, a long-time fan from the times of the Go-Betweens, had met and bonded at an Australian festival they both played in 2016. They had toured together with the core of the Strawberries band (Olsson and Thorell) the year after that, so their musical common ground was well explored years before recordings began.

“It's great working with someone who is truly an auteur,” says Peter Morén, looking back on the intense, focussed four week period working on the album in September/October 2024, “That sense of direction that 'This is what I do, and this is who I am as I perceive it.' He does what he does in the only way he can and changes and evolves in that sphere, but never loses sight of his own personality and strengths.” “I wanted to explode the sound of my records to an extent”, is Robert Forster's somewhat different assessment of the collaboration, “I wanted to just bring in new colours.”

Nowhere is this more evident than on the album's monumental closing track “Diamonds”, which starts off as a cross between Lou Reed and Buffalo Springfield, then takes off via Astral Weeks into an (almost) Albert Ayler direction, with Lina Langendorf given free rein on the tenor sax and Forster himself relinquishing his trademark understatement for some unexpected outbursts of falsetto. It might just be a challenge for the more conservative end of Robert Forster's fan community, and that, he says, is “a good thing. I really love it. It's the last song. And you think you know the album, and you think you know Robert Forster. And then this last song comes in that's not like anything I've done, you know, sonically and musically.”

It all sounds much like the musical equivalent of a 67-year-old man standing in front of a bowl of strawberries that taste out of the ordinary who can't help himself but gobble them all up. After all, what can ordinary be?

Get a copy of Robert Forster's "Strawberries" album via Bandcamp right here. Visit Robert Forster's site for information about upcoming shows, his writing and more. Watch videos for the album's title track "Strawberries" and "All Of The Time" along with two performance clips below. 

The Girl With The Replaceable Head enlists Lindy Morrison for new album

Hurrah!'s Taffy Hughes and TGWTRH cut "Sometimes She Lives In The Dark" with the Go-Betweens' Lindy Morrison on drums.

Sometimes She Lives In The Dark – The Girl With The Replaceable Head 

1.Summer of Love 

2.Shangri-la 

3.Johnny No.3 

4.This is the Girl 

5.Her Last Day on Earth

6.King 03:59 

7.Shalalalala 

8.Summertime

9.Sometimes She Lives in the Dark

10.Born Again

Sometimes She Lives In The Dark is available via Bandcamp right here. Check out The Girl With The Replaceable Head covering the Go-Betweens' classic "Apology Accepted" below. Watch a performance of "Lady Mars on FB right here. 

 

90s Nostalgia: Grant McLennan & Robert Forster @ Other Music, 1999

Remember in-store performances? Here's Robert Forster & Grant McLennan reprising a Go-Betweens classic at Other Music. 

Go-Betweens' Amanda Brown releases overdue solo album Five Guitars

You can tell from the sound of Five Guitars that Amanda Brown has spent the past 20 years creating soundtracks for film & TV.

Here's the scoop...

Amanda Brown is a screen composer, songwriter and musician. The first stage of her career was spent playing in bands- most notably The Go-Betweens - with whom she toured the world and recorded two albums - Tallulah and 16 Lovers Lane. Amanda has played with a range of artists including R.E.M, Silverchair, Youth Group and The Apartments and shared the bill with many others including The Neville Brothers, Alex Chilton, Marianne Faithful, Deborah Harry and John Cale. 

In recent years Amanda has been writing music for the screen, scoring feature films Babyteeth and Here Out West and drama series including The Secrets She Keeps, Underbelly Vanishing Act and Deadloch. 

Eight Guitars is her first solo album of songs. 

These songs were written over a long period of time - some are from films while others were composed during periods between screen commissions. In 2020 facing the prospect of both the music and film industries shutting down due to the pandemic, the time seemed right to bring Eight Guitars to fruition. 

Each song features a different guest guitarist drawn from a pool of regular collaborators and friends. Guitarists were not chosen for their virtuosity (although they are all certainly brilliant players) but for their unique style and sound. Eight Guitars features Kirin J Callinan, Damien Lane, Danny Widdicombe, Brendan Gallagher, Bruce Reid, Shane O'Mara and Daniel Champagne. 

The album was produced by Tony Buchen - who describes it as 'Cosmic Americana' - and it is now available via Bandcamp right here. For more information about Amanda's music for film and television, visit the link to her site following the videos for "Light Lingers On," "Where It All Began" and "Freedom Song" below.  

LINKS

Amanda Brown's site http://www.amandabrowncomposer.com

The Music Amanda Brown: Eight Guitars interview

Sydney Morning Herald 'Erased' from the Go-Betweens, Amanda Brown wonders what's changed

Happy Birthday Grant McLennan!

Remembering Go-Betweens singer/songwriter Grant McLennan with a few performances and a lovely tribute from Norman & Joe.

Listen to The Go-Betweens & The Irish Writers

Check out documentary maker Ken Sweeney's excellent 50-minute podcast on The Go-Betweens below. 

Here's the scoop...

Australian group The Go-Betweens founding members Robert Forster and bandmate, the late Grant McLennan have been hailed as ‘the Lennon & McCartney of indie’

Their music inspiring bands from Franz Ferdinand to Teenage Fanclub and a favourite of music journalists.

But what has never been discussed before- is how Irish writers like James Joyce – whose work Grant and Robert studied in Queensland University – inspired The Go-Betweens to write about their own country, Australia in classic songs like Cattle and Cane.

Life long Go-Betweens fan and documentary maker Ken Sweeney, (RTE radio docs ‘REM Out Of Athens’ and ‘In Search Of The Blue Nile’) asked Robert Forster to join him at Beacon Studios in Dublin to tell their story and play some of the Go-Betweens classic songs on acoustic guitar. But the 50 minute special also features, an unreleased interview Ken did with Grant McLennan in August 2000, prior to his death in May 2006. Listen via Mixcloud right here or alternately, via Soundcloud right here.

Before They Were Famous: Robert Vickers

Prior to joining the Go-Betweens, bassist Robert Vickers cut an album with The Colors produced by Clem Burke!   Photo: Vinny Zuflante 

Robert Vickers recalls his time with The Colors...

"In early 1979 I arrived in New York City on my way to Europe from my home in Brisbane, Australia and accidently got myself into a band with a couple of guys I met the first time I went to CBGBs. I decided to stay. Rent was cheap; CBs and Max’s Kansas City were within walking distance and they had the best new bands playing every night. We played a kind of punk pop heavily influenced by ‘60s and ‘70s pop bands. In about a year we were being managed by the owner of CBGBs, Hilly Kristal and the drummer from Blondie, Clem Burke offered to produce us. A local indie label which was a rare thing in those times put up the money and we went into Electric Lady Studios and recorded an EP with Clem also playing drums. It came out on colored vinyl in a faux Japanese import cover. We were happening.

"Even though we weren’t on a major label or touring the world it still seemed like with were going somewhere fast. The New York music scene then was a world unto itself. Headlining a weekend at CBGBs, the coolest club in the coolest city in this, or any world felt like a pinnacle. Especially for someone like me who had been watching this historic explosion of creativity from afar in the pages of magazines and on the backs of record sleeves. The first wave of CBs bands had now moved on to bigger things and it seemed likely we would too. 

"The major labels passed on us but undeterred we recorded an album with Clem again producing and this track, “Popstar” is one of my songs from it. We kept playing till the end of 1982 but the fire had gone out and by the time the album was released the band was over. I went to London to join some friends from Australia, The Go-Betweens and took some invaluable lessons on life and music with me." – Robert Vickers

Listen to "Popstar" by The Colors along with the rippin' "Rave It Up" below. 

 

Robert Forster talks about The Go-Betweens after Spring Hill Fair

Robert Forster gets into what was going on behind-the-scenes during the second phase of the Go-Betweens, 1985-1989. 

 

Second volume of G Stands for Go-Betweens box set spotlights their golden era

Five years after the first volume, Domino is releasing G Stands For Go-Betweens Vol. 2 – including 5 vinyl LPs, 5 CDs and 112-page book – on Dec. 6

Here's what you get...

• 5 x LPs - Three studio albums from the group’s peak period on Beggars Banquet plus a previously unreleased double live album recorded at London's Town & Country Club on May 10th, 1987.
• 5 x CDs - Rare, hard-to-find and unreleased demos, recordings, radio sessions including a collection of 28 songs intended for what was supposed to be the follow-up to 16 Lovers Lane.
• 112 page book - A trove of archival photos and extensive historical liner notes from founding member Robert Forster - plus additional pieces from guest essayists, fans & contemporaries.
• The Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express songbook. Prepared at the time of release by their publisher, this is the first ever printing, containing hand-transcribed sheet music of all ten songs from the aforementioned album.
• Reproduction of the promotional poster for a contemporaneous Melbourne show.

Please note that the initial copies including a book from Grant McLennan’s personal literary collection have now sold out.

G Stands For Go-Betweens, Volume Two extensively documents the band’s creative output in the latter half of the 80s in an ambitious box containing four albums over five LPs, five compact discs and an extensive 112 page book, featuring a trove of archival photos and extensive historical liner notes from founding member Robert Forster (who'll be playing solo at Toronto's Drake Hotel on November 12th – get tickets here) , along with additional pieces from guest essayists, fans and contemporaries. Check out the complete tracklisting below. You can pre-order a copy directly from Domino Records for $180 U.S. right here.

G STANDS FOR GO-BETWEENS Volume 2 

LP 1: Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express
side A:
Spring Rain
The Ghost And The Black Hat
The Wrong Road
To Reach Me
Twin Layers Of Lightning
side B:
In The Core Of The Flame
Head Full Of Steam
Bow Down
Palm Sunday (On Board the SS Within)
Apology Accepted



LP 2: Tallulah
side A:
Right Here
You Tell Me
Someone Else’s Wife
I Just Get Caught Out
Cut It Out
side B:
The House That Jack Kerouac Built
Bye Bye Pride
Spirit Of A Vampyre
The Clarke Sisters
Hope Then Strife



LP 3: 16 Lovers Lane
side A:
Side One:
Love Goes On!
Quiet Heart
Love Is A Sign
You Can’t Say No Forever The Devil’s Eye
side B:
Streets Of Your Town
Clouds
Was There Anything I Could Do?
I’m Allright
Dive For Your Memory



LP 4: Fountains Of Youth: Town & Country Club 10/5/87
side A:
Bye Bye Pride
Unkind And Unwise
Part Company
The House That Jack Kerouac Built
side B:
The Clarke Sisters
This Girl, Black Girl
Don’t Call Me Gone
When People Are Dead
Your Turn My Turn
side C:
Cut It Out
You Tell Me
Head Full Of Steam
Right Here
Man O’ Sand To Girl O’ Sea
side D:
Apology Accepted
Spring Rain
Karen
Eight Picture

CD 1: The Devil Is In Your Dress
1. In The Core Of A Flame
2. Living The Life At Hand
3. To Reach Me
4. Grandfather Slow
5. Spring Rain
6. Head Full Of Steam
7. Wrong Road Round
8. Don’t Let Him Come Back
9. Reunion Dinner
10. Little Joe
11. The Life At Hand
12. Casanova’s Last Words
13. I Work In A Health Spa

CD 2: Run From Him
1. I Know What I Like
2. You Tell Me
3. Do It Like The Devil Did
4. Together At Last
5. Cut It Out
6. Easier Said Than Done
7. The House That Jack Kerouac Built
8. Right Here
9. Someone Else’s Wife
10. The Clarke Sisters
11. Bye Bye Pride
12. I Just Get Caught Out
13. A Little Romance
14. When People Are Dead
15. Don’t Call Me Gone
16. Time In The Desert
17. Doo Wop in ‘A’ (Bam Boom)



CD 3: Trying To Be A Strong Person
1. Wait Until June
2. The Devil’s Eye
3. I’m Allright
4. Was There Anything I Could Do?
5. You Won’t Find It Again
6. Love Is A Sign
7. Love Goes On!
8. Dive For Your Memory
9. Apples In Bed
10. Clouds
11. Head Over Heels
12. Casanova’s Last Words
13. You Can’t So No Forever
14. Quiet Heart
15. Wait Until June
16. Casanova’s Last Words
17. Rock and Roll Friend
18. Mexican Postcard
19. Rock and Roll Friend
20. Dive For Your Memory
21. Quiet Heart
22. Clouds
23. Love Goes On



CD 4: Loving Shocks: Demos for 7th album
1. Dear Black Dream
2. Danger in The Past
3. Easy Come Easy Go
4. Broadway Bride
5. I Love You Still
6. What You Call Change
7. Open Invitation
8. You Can Dream About Tomorrow
9. I’ve Been Looking For Somebody
10. Outlaw #1
11. Haunted House
12. Sally’s Revolution Blues

CD 5: Loving Shocks: Demos for 7th album
1. Just Get That Straight
2. The Days My Eyes Came Back
3. Running The Risk Of Ever Losing You
4. It Had To Me
5. Signs Of Life
6. How I Wish This War Was Over
7. Art Cinema
8. Nowhere By Any Other Name
9. No Peace In The Palace
10. Here They Come
11. Child Of God
12. The Man Who Died Of Rapture
13. House of Snakes
14. All The Time
15. Send Him Back Home
16. What Goes Up Must Come Down

Robert Forster sings the Go-Betweens at the Copenhagen Jazzhouse

Here's Robert Forster and company performing a few old Go-Betweens faves in Denmark recently.

Robert Forster live in London 2015

Here are a few memorable tunes the Go-Betweens co-founder performed solo at Bush Hall last December. 

Go-Betweens' Apology Accepted (alternate take)

The Go-Betweens' 1984 Peel Session

Remembering Grant McLennan on his day

Grant McLennan discusses his Go-Betweens song Cattle and Cane with Robert Forster below

Cheers to Robert Forster on his day!

• 1. Never follow an artist who describes his or her work as ‘dark’.
• 2. The second-last song on every album is the weakest.
• 3. Great bands tend to look alike.
• 4. Being a rock star is a 24-hour-a-day job.
• 5. The band with the most tattoos has the worst songs.
• 6. No band does anything new on stage after the first 20 minutes.
• 7. The guitarist who changes guitars on stage after every third number is showing you his guitar collection.
• 8. Every great artist hides behind their manager.
• 9. Great bands don’t have members making solo albums.
• 10. The three-piece band is the purest form of rock and roll expression.