THE GO-BETWEENS, OCEANS APART

The pop album is very quickly becoming an outdated concept because music is outgrowing it, both artistically and commercially. The most ambitious music aims for something beyond the album, as well it should : this is, after all, a form which evolved forty years ago, when pop outgrew the 7 inch and wanted to do something more grown-up, something more like what jazz musicians were doing. For a long while, the rock album became an event, both in the expectation that greeted its arrival, and the ritualist way by which it was carefully taken out of its wrapping, played on headphones, its gatefold sleeve pored over and examined for coded drug references or speculation that the bassist might in fact be dead etc etc.

I would be interested to hear what readers think was the last rock album qua event. The sheer quantity of bands and albums and record labels (and, more to the point, the sheer quantity of music on a CD) means that a release doesn’t feel special, however much you love the band or artist or opening single. Even if you ignored all music released before 8 October 2006 and spent 24 hours a day listening to new releases, it would still be impossible to hear everything – impossible, even, to hear most of the stuff you are interested in. The release of the third Baby Bird, Fatherhood, was as close as it got for me, but that was a completely personal thing – he only released a thousand copies of it.

The 45 survived long after the birth and consolidation of the album, of course, but one wonders whether it would have if MTV hadn’t come along. And one wonders whether the album will survive the age of the download, and the desire for something other than 45 minutes of well-crafted, thematically linked pop music.

The result of the slow death of the album is that the few shining examples of really great post-millennial albums tend to be very traditional. An innovative musician will shy away from the album, trying to play around with form, exploit the potential for randomness in hearing music that computers create etc. They will (hopefully) create something shocking, scary, provocative. They will tell you something about the world in a form, or in a way you have never before encountered. But anybody sticking with the album had better bear its limits in mind.

The Go-Betweens were always the classic albums band : each of their albums are short, concise, song-and-narrative-based, conversational, humble, beautiful. Their final album, Oceans Apart, which was released last year but which I have only just heard, is quite, quite beautiful. Clocking in at 39 minutes, it does not experiment with form at all. It barely rocks out, but gathers itself at a subtle pace which casually grabs and stops you mid-breath. Mark Wallis and David Ruffy’s production is bathed in echoey baritone guitars, washes of woodwind and bass thrum like a cuddle.



It reveals, as the Go-Betweens always do, a bold romanticism for relationships and for the Australia in which they so rarely recorded. But the revelation is Robert Forster, whose wiredness I must admit always jarred a little for me against Grant McLennan’s swooning tenderness. Forster’s “Darlinghurst Nights” is the track of his career, its lyric recalling a bittersweet and unresolved period of youth, and its roll-call of characters – “Marjorie and Kim, Andy and Clint, Debbie, Bertie, people came and went. And then there was Suzie who we never ever saw again” – truly evocative. And his singing on “Lavender” is incredible – completely guileless, like McCartney’s singing on “She’s Leaving Home.” As for McLennan, well his best song, “This Night’s for you,” is positively Forsteresque.

The Go-Betweens are an easy band to get dewy-eyed over, not least because McLennan’s death in the spring means that we know this is their last album. They exude innocence and humility, and more importantly their creativity was given fruition by genuine relationships : McLennan and fellow Go-Between Amanda Brown (the oboeist who, on Tallulah’s “Bye Bye Pride,” contributes the band’s killer 20 seconds) were partners during the 80s, and the adoration that Forster and McLennan shared is palpable.

Shortly after his death, Amanda Brown said of McLennan:

"Grant's songs captured an Australia that was influenced by his love for contemporary American writers like Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford and Raymond Carver and songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith. These writers inform his images of Australia, which range from the landscapes tinged with nostalgia and loss, suburban life, epic narratives and, of course, exquisite love songs."

The album is really very much like the novel : unsatisfactory for much of what we want to say, but perfect for these kind of Big Themes. Postmodernism has barely eroded the conservatism of rock music, and it certainly had no noticeable influence on the Go-Betweens. Maybe that’s because postmodernism is a regrettable by-product of a voracious world. The Go-Betweens were not of that world, which is why they never made a bad record. And in Oceans Apart, they made their best.

[If you have never heard the Go-Betweens, this is a video of “Streets of your Town”. Listen to it. Now. You’ll be hooked, I promise].