The Evangelist
Australia’s Go-Betweens were among the musically significant “alternative rock” bands to emerge from the 1980s. The band continued an on-again, off-again relationship over the following two decades, adding and subtracting members, with the core always defined as the two contrasting songwriters: Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. McLennan suffered a fatal heart attack in May 2006, and 2008\'s *The Evangelist* became Forster’s first solo album in 12 years. Naturally then, this is an album infused with sadness. “Demon Days,” one of their final collaborations, has an undeniable prescience as its McLennan-penned chorus states: “But something’s not right / Something’s gone wrong.” The arrangements, supplied mostly by latter-day Go-Betweens, bassist Adele Pickvance and drummer Glenn Thompson, with string accents from Audrey Riley and occasional organ from Seamus Beaghen, are sparse and utilitarian. Forster’s lyrics are stripped to the bone. Whether he’s finding inner peace (“Pandanus”), accepting fate (“If It Rains”), apologizing (or is it rationalizing?) to his German wife for relocating her to Australia (“The Evangelist”) or doing battle with tragedy (“It Ain’t Easy”), he sings slow and steady, keeping control over the one aspect still within his reach.
Robert Forster's first release since the death of Grant McLennan, his late partner in the Go-Betweens, is also his best solo album.
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The unexpected death of Grant McLennan by heart attack in 2006 was the kind of sadly quotidian tragedy that can't really be guarded against; you just have...