Review: The Go-Betweens Right Here a timely reminder of an Australian band ahead of their time
REVIEW: The Go-Betweens Right Here is a vivid documentary portrait of an Australian band whose rich legacy is undervalued in their own country.
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IT’S about bloody time there was a documentary made to properly explore and exalt the rich musical legacy of the one and only The Go-Betweens.
Though they never troubled the keepers of the sales charts across a career spanning three decades — and multiple line-up changes — The Go-Betweens modestly shaped an incredible body of work that remains held in the highest regard right around the globe.
With Right Here, director Kriv Stenders (an intuitive and shrewd multi-tasker whose TV remake of Wake in Fright drops next month) has resisted churning up a fans-only affair requiring deep insider knowledge of this unique Australian outfit.
No, this is a warm, inviting, frank and self-deprecating chronicle of The Go-Betweens, capable of engrossing hardliners and first-timers alike.
At the peak of the group’s powers, the dual singer-songwriter nuclei of founding members Robert Forster and the late Grant McLennan emitted a knowing, yet heartfelt glow that has not diminished over time.
What the doco isolates with compelling clarity is that at every stage of their ungainly, yet fruitful evolution — though particularly when the great Lindy Morrison sat behind the drums — no-one else in the world of music sounded remotely like The Go-Betweens.
A fine blend of earthy recent interviews (dominated by the ever-erudite Forster, a raconteur to be reckoned with) and cleverly curated archival footage (the mercurial McLennan’s place to shine) paints a vivid portrait of like-minded artists whose saving graces were often also fatal flaws.
There are actually enough sudden shifts in mood, location, fortune and romantic status in this tale to warrant consideration for a dramatised feature at some point in the future.
By the end of Right Here, you’ll no longer have ‘em filed away as the greatest band to ever hail from Brisbane. Or as the greatest band from Australia never to have a hit in their own country.
You’ll simply remember The Go-Betweens as a great band.
THE GO-BETWEENS: RIGHT HERE (M)
Rating: four stars (4 out of 5)
Director: Kriv Stenders (Red Dog)
Starring: Robert Forster, Lindy Morrison, Peter Walsh, John Willsteed, Clinton Walker.
The songs remain the same, and the sound has a life all its own
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