Robert Forster

Although commonly considered to be the darker, artier half of the creative force of the Go-Betweens -- John Lennon to Grant McLennan's Paul McCartney, as it were -- Robert Forster has always had a knack for crafty pop songs along with the brooding ballads he contributed to the Go-Betweens' albums, and his solo career has shown a healthy mix of the two styles. Forster, a native of Brisbane, Australia, formed the Go-Betweens with McLennan at Queensland University in 1978. The duo kept the band going through six albums by nearly as many lineups, progressing from stark Factory Records-style art-rock to the creamy commercial pop of their last album, 1990's 16 Lovers Lane. The group split up during the sessions for that album's follow-up, and Forster took the songs he had written for it and recorded them with fellow Australian expatriate Mick Harvey (ex-Birthday Party) in Berlin, with members of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds in the backing group. A return to the bleak starkness of the early Go-Betweens, 1990's Danger in the Past sounds like a creative rebirth for Forster, who had been disappointed with the slick sound of the last couple of Go-Betweens records. If Danger in the Past is a stylistic cousin to the Go-Betweens' Before Hollywood, then 1993's Calling From a Country Phone is the equivalent of the group's superb mid-period albums like Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express. Largely ditching the uneasiness of Danger in the Past, the follow-up returns to the kind of quirky but richly melodic folk-rock that Forster does so well. During the sessions for that album, Forster began working on an album of covers, which was released the following year as I Had a New York Girlfriend. Reuniting with Harvey and the Bad Seeds' Conway Savage, Forster completely reworks the songs in...