1986's Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express is graced with Grant McLennan's lyrical quill (as opposed to the more chisel-etched of Forster) with a set of songs more along the lines of Cattle and Cane, which was nominated in 2003 by the Australian Performing Rights Association as one of the ten best Australian songs of all time, and the equally beautiful Bachelor Kisses.

Liberty is a strong album; enhanced by Vickers' return-to-the-roots bass playing. Highlights include the pastoral opener Spring Rain and the thick-with-desire Head Full of Steam. Liberty Belle, while not my favorite release (Spring Hill Fair earns that title), is consistently praised as the most accessible of Go-Betweens releases (a position I would delegate to 16 Lovers Lane)

Spring Rain is a buoyant song, the guitar plinking like clean drops of rain. "Falling like just sheets, coming down like love, falling at my feet". Toothy and melodic soloing as bouncy as is titularly suggested. Head Full of Steam is poptasticly laden with lustful unrequited love; "I never met her type she ignored me and that's all right, never to be friends ah my body lie on her floor" This song is sexy and tormented, "104 degrees with a head full of steam"- a trademark of my favorite Go-Betweens' songs.

Don't Let Him Come Back (here in new form) is another favored tune, it reminds me much of early Bat's material; sunny yet blistering with a darker melty interior. Pleasantly veiled lyrics ("Lookout for that mouth it will make you jump from the roof") and potent guitar soloing worthy of Sterling Morrison (or at least Sean Eden). The battleship is almost sunk by the unfortunate 80's keyboarding, though in this case it's forgivable.

Tallulah has not been treated well by time's revisionist musical ear. Much of the orchestration belongs along with Green-era REM- banished to some circle of hell reserved for bad choices made by otherwise good bands (though REM is banished entirely post-Automatic). Saturated with seagull-flocked synth and sticky with the sheen of that decade.

When People Are Dead is sufficiently bittersweet to counter balance the saccharine Right Here and I Just Got Caught Out. It is as much of a dirge as the title suggests, with a lyrical load of funereal reference. The House that Jack Kerouac Built is the real winner of the cd, blatantly sexy at the start "You and I together, with nothing showing at all, in a darkened cinema, I'll give you pleasure in the stall" it melds into more of a lust drenched torch song of the kind that thrills as much as it sends you to your knees. Much of Tallulah is entrenched in 1987, but it is worthy of purchase if not for The House alone.

A Little Romance, is a light song with simple chords and structure that betrays wickedly funny lyrics such as "It was winter, no summer we swam in Veronica Lake with your friend the male model who I tried to burn at the stake" making it another meritable song.