Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Such a Shame
Brisbane on Australia's sunny central east coast has hardly been a hotbed of musical creativity although it did give us the protopunk band the Saints lead by the late, whippet-smart Chris Bailey, the rock band Powderfinger, the alt.pop of the Veronicas and the mainstream Savage Garden.
Of course there have been others but the city's great musical export were the Go-Betweens which had a rare conjunction of songwriters in the late Grant McLennan and Robert Forster, both refined craftsmen of the literary persuasion.
Forster – who wrote an excellent autobiography Grant & I; Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens in 2016 – named one of his first groups the Godot's: “The band you've been waiting for”.
This ninth solo album from the astute 67-year old looks back to love and loss. Pithy lines ring out: “Fresh love is good love” on the chiming opener Tell It Back To Me; “no two stories are same and love can be a winning game, but no two lovers are the same” in the acoustic Breakfast on the Train; Foolish I Know has a lonely gay man yearning for his straight friend: “I like him but there just one catch”.
Forster can roar (rowdy passages in the Velvet Underground shuffle of Diamonds) but mostly strips to the bone: Such a Shame is melancholy piano ballad with “you can't erase older days til better ones arrive” and some sardonic lines about his career.
Strawberries can be sweet but tart and, like the equally lanky Jarvis Cocker, Forster is the adult in the room.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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