There’s nothing quite so wistful as driving through the streets of my rural, small-town boyhood, listening, as I have routinely done, to bygone soundtracks of my romanticized teenage past. This holiday season, I returned to Richmond, Missouri. I recalled fondly my previous incarnation as flute-playing band geek and math club stalwart, while simultaneously trying to forget how poorly those distinctions played with the ladies. This particular bittersweet drive down memory lane (and around Richmond’s red-bricked town square) was made all the more complete by The Go-Betweens songs coming from my car speakers. Indeed the iPod fates (or iFates) dropped The Go-Betweens’ “Quiet Heart” into my lap like a memory bomb. Thank you, iFates.
Put simply, “Quiet Heart” is just plain pretty. It is the best song on The Go-Betweens’ 1988 alternative pop must-listen—16 Lovers Lane. Lane was their last album before the group disbanded in 1989 so that its members could pursue other projects and solo careers. At the time, I was deeply saddened. For me, the Robert Forster/Grant McClennan songwriting tandem was on par with Morrissey/Marr. Since I had just suffered the loss of The Smiths in 1987, my weak heart couldn’t take the dissolution of my Aussie heroes shortly thereafter. Did these duos not realize they were abandoning us hopeless romantics to the scrawny wolves of late-80s Hall/Oates?
They reunited in 2000 to produce arguably their best and most mature work, but I did not anticipate that in my late-80s hangover. You see, in the context of 80s musical plasticity, The Go-Betweens produced music of warmth and subtlety. Refreshingly melodic and, on Lane at least, assuredly full, you can hear even in 1988 the sound of a band in harmony with itself and one not beholden to any corporate production expectations. With only one noticeable drum machine, multi-layered acoustics, girl-boy vocals, lyrics that wax romantic and meaningful, Lane made me feel somehow less lonely and certainly hopeful that even better music was on the horizon.
First single “Streets of Your Town” showcases these elements, as does the 3rd-person Dear John narrative of the Hoodoo Gurus-cum-Smiths jangle of “Was There Anything I Could Do?” On the latter, McClennan waxes sage-like from beyond the grave. You see, in 2006 he died of a heart attack at the untimely age of 48. He urges me—and all former flute-playing, math-clubbing, ever-love unlucky boys—on to brighter days and greener pastures. “If you spend your life looking behind you, you don’t see what’s up front,” he warns. Certainly, as adults, we must do that. If we try to reconstruct a romantic past that may have never existed, we might find ourselves chasing a wil-o-the-wisp, just beyond our grasp, that can only ever deliver an unrequited romance with and unhealthy longing for what is lost. However, before your memories of great album-length treasure troves pass with the death of the compact disc, you owe it to yourselves to seek this album out, then turn to the even-better Oceans Apart (2006). It may not evoke the memories in you that it has in me, but both have power. In an era where pop music is worse than ever, The Go-Betweens still provide an honest-to-goodness sonic oasis. That is all any of us as appreciative listeners can really ask.
Rest in peace Grant McClennan and thank you Go-Betweens.
Download: The Go-Betweens - “Quiet Heart”
Download: The Go-Betweens - “Streets of Your Town”
January 11th, 2009 at 3:54 am
Without a doubt my favorite Go-Betweens album as well.
January 11th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Thank you everyone for the opportunity to write about it!
January 11th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I hadn’t thought about them in years. I think I may have Lane on vinyl.
January 12th, 2009 at 1:51 am
I like this post.