Go Betweens revival relives the summer of jangle
THIRTY years ago Brisbane band the Go Betweens recorded the classic rock album 16 Lovers Lane and now three of them have relived it in a nostalgic live performance.
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THIRTY years ago Brisbane band the Go Betweens recorded the album 16 Lovers Lane — 10 tracks which were to be the crowning achievement of the songwriting duo Robert Forster and Grant McLennan.
Barely a year after it was released the band went their separate ways, Forster eventually forging a solo career and, in 2006, McLennan dying of a heart attack.
The surviving trio from the 1988 classic album — drummer Lindy Morrison, multi-instrumentalist Amanda Brown and bass guitarist John Willsteed — decided to revive the songs, inviting vocalists from bands young and old to join them in a reunion concert performing the tracks in their original order.
The show was unveiled at Brisbane’s Queensland Music Festival late last year and was brought to Sydney for a one-off performance as a highlight of this year’s Sydney Festival.
Using a different line-up for Sydney, the Go Between originals called on three veterans with personal links to the band — Steve Kilbey (The Church); Rob Snarski (The Blackeyed Susans) and Peter Milton Walsh (The Apartments) — alongside some younger talent to recreate pretty faithfully the album’s distinctive jangly poppy sound world which, combined with some intelligent and poetic lyrics, helped make it a big hit in the UK at the time and a must-have album for a generation of Australian music fans.
ENERGY
Fleshing out the band with a top-notch trio of instrumentalists in Dan Kelly, Daniel Widdicombe and Luke Daniel Peacock, some of our best indie singers were called on to put their spin on the set list.
Two in particular, Kirin J Callinan, the bad boy of indie who got into hot water for exposing himself at an awards night, and Shogun, frontman of Sydney garage band Royal Headache, injected plenty of energy into their numbers, although Shogun was more comfortable in the rousing The House Jack Kerouac Built than in the album opener Love Goes On!
Callinan showed a fine comedic touch with his dancing and costume choices donning a cowboy hat for You Can’t Say No Forever and at one stage changing into a frock — a reference to the well-known black and white cross-dressing shot of McLennan, Morrison and Forster.
Izzi Manfredi of The Preatures brought some nice whimsy to Apples In Bed and gave a creditable shot at Was There Anything I Could Do?
VAMPING
But the three older pros had the stronger moments. Kilbey dry and wry voice tailor-made for the smash hit Streets Of Your Town while Snarski’s Robert Hawley-like crooning style was a perfect fit for Quiet Heart, managing an unlikely but strangely effective duet with Melbourne Goth rock frontwoman Romy Vager on Apology Accepted.
And Peter Milton Walsh of The Apartments milked to the max the vamping Dive For Your Memory.
Meanwhile the three originals — Brown with her classically trained glassy violin lines and striking oboe, Morrison’s no-nonsense tight rock drumming and Willsteed’s lovely bass lines and occasional melodic acoustic guitar leads — had a great night sharing memories and reliving one of the greatest year’s in Australian rock music history.
Perhaps the nicest moment was Brown’s performance of The Devil’s Eye, the love song that McLennan wrote for her while she was away on holiday in New York.
The night evoked a bright, jangly moment in history. An album which in Willsteed’s words “is anchored in that summer, and the lightness that I felt at the time: the days stretching out, nights full of smiles and only music ahead”.
SYDNEY FESTIVAL
● CONCERT: Go Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane
● WHERE: State Theatre
● WHEN: Thursday, January 19