REVIEW: The Go-betweens, Bellavista Terrace (Best of The
Go-betweens)
- David Landgren
The '80s were an exceptionally vibrant and dynamic period in Australian pop music. In turn, The Go-betweens remain the finest exponents of a certain conception of guitar-based pop melodies. If you haven't yet discovered them, now is the time to take the plunge.
Here we are, a decade after they decided to call it quits. Over the past couple of years, Beggars Banquet re-released all their albums on CDs. To long-time fans, this was a godsend, a chance to retire aging vinyl albums, to be able to play them at long last on a CD player.
I'm not sure, however, that the band picked up many new listeners in the exercise. Having six albums to choose from makes it difficult to decide where to start. What better way then, to get to learn to love The Go-betweens than a compilation of some of the best stuff they put out. The compilation places an emphasis on the latter albums, a sentiment I quite agree with. There are no tracks from the first album Send me a lullaby, which is probably just as well; it's certainly my least favourite.
From their final album 16 Lovers Lane are the songs "Was there anything I could do?," "Streets of your town" and "Dive for your memory." The last song is certainly one of the most achingly beautiful pop songs about love we will ever be likely to hear. As much as 16 Lovers Lane was their swan song, their previous album Tallulah was where they really shone. The arrangements are lush, the lyrics are poetic and the sense of optimism in the band's future is infectious. From this album, the tracks selected are the restless, simmering "The house that Jack Kerouac built" and the subdued yet uplifting "Bye bye pride." This is a record that could have changed the course of pop history. The secret ingredient that sets the album apart from what they had done before is Amanda Brown, who brought the Go-betweens violin and oboe. It was such a perfect complement to Forster's and McLennan's songwriting.
Before Hollywood, their second and last album as a trio (Robert Forster, Grant McLennan and Lindy Morrison) is represented by "Cattle and Cane" and "That way." Try as I might to avoid the trap of fruitless arguments ("Why didn't they include *that* song?"), I must profess a certain amount of perplexity as to why "Dusty in here" wasn't used instead.
The next two albums, Spring Hill Fair and Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express, saw the band rounded out with the addition of Robert Vickers on bass. From the former is "Part company," "Draining the pool for you," "Man o'sand to girl o'sea" and "Bachelor kisses," and from the latter there is "Head full of steam," "The wrong road" and "Spring rain."
No doubt Go-betweens fans have been (and always will be) endlessly debating why these songs were chosen and not others, but at the end of the day I can't really find fault with the selections; it's as good as anything anyone else could come up with. If it inspires you to go and investigate the rest of their material, then that's really all that matters.
