THE Go-Betweens make old-fashioned yet timeless records, just like they did before when no one but "a fistful of journalists and some students" paid due care and attention in the Eighties.
Oceans Apart is their third release, but first in full bloom, since Australians Robert Forster and Grant McLennan renewed their partnership in 2000 after 12 years adrift.
Ten grown-up songs on travel, love, family ties and Dostoevsky look-alikes fill 39 minutes with melancholic, entrancing melody, and nothing much has changed. Like Lennon and McCartney, they take joint credits yet are competitive, and so you can always tell your Forster from your McLennan.
Forster, the sardonic, angular and bookish one, is the David Byrne of the two, writing with twitchy, barbed wit. McLennan, crumpled and sensitive, is still struck by wonder and stung by vulnerability. Oceans apart they may be, but they swell together in new maturity.
Updated: 09:18 Thursday, May 05, 2005
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