Music Review: Robert Forster - The Evangelist

When it comes to the Go-Betweens, it has never been precisely clear where the band's two singer/songwriters, Robert Forster & Grant McLennan, began and ended. As with many great bands, a big key to the Brisbane art poppers' success was in the way the 'Tweens' two major creative forces jostled against each other. So when McLennan passed away from an unexpected heart attack in 2006, fans of the band who had already experienced what it was like when the group temporarily disbanded in the nineties understandably mourned. Though both artists had produced their share of well-reviewed solo discs in the years before the trio of great albums (Friends of Rachel Worth; Bright Yellow, Bright Orange; and Oceans Apart) released by the revitalized revamped Go-Betweens, as a rock band, they remained something special: pop heroes in some alternate universe where the VU's Loaded went platinum the first year of its release.

Two years after McLennan's death (has it been three years since Oceans Apart already?), his surviving band partner has picked up the pieces, bringing bassist Adele Pickvance and drummer Glenn Thompson from the group's final configuration with him. Forster's first post-post-Go-Betweens album, The Evangelist (Yep Roc), is exactly what you'd expect it to be: a mourning eulogy for McLennan ("There was melody, there was harmony, there was sweet Sherrie, but it was melody he loved most of all.") and a continuation of the tuneful blend of journaling and storytelling that Forster has developed over the years. Yes, it's not the Go-Betweens, but for lovers of Forster's moaningly articulate expressiveness, it's still pretty darn fine.

Three of the disc's ten tracks turn out to be posthumous songwriting collaborations with McLennan, and none-too-surprisingly, they're among the most instantly accessible cuts on Evangelist. Though in practice the dichotomy didn't always hold, McLennan's voice was frequently the more overtly poppy of the duo, where Forster was the band's moody boho. You can really hear the ghost of Grant in the jaunty mandolin-driven "Let Your Light In, Babe," and even more hauntingly in Forster's Kinks-y tribute to his former bandmate, "It Ain't Easy." The third McLennan-touched track, "Demon Days" even hearkens back to the chamber folk sound (courtesy cellist Audrey Riley) of pre-breakup Go-Betweens discs like Tallulah and 16 Lover's Lane.

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is a Books editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy comic fat acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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