Robert Forster

Although long viewed as the more introspective and experimental counterpart within the Go-Betweens—the Lennon figure to Grant McLennan's McCartney—singer, songwriter, and guitarist Robert Forster also possessed a gift for intricate pop constructions alongside the moody ballads he supplied to the band's catalog. His solo work, launched with 1990's Danger in the Past, integrated both approaches in equal measure. Once the '80s group reconvened in 2000, Forster had already delivered three additional solo sets, among them the self-produced Calling from a Country Phone (1993). The reunion yielded three albums that earned widespread critical praise before McLennan's death in 2006. Forster continued as a music journalist and author before returning to recording and issuing a series of distinctive, melody-driven solo albums: 2008's The Evangelist, steeped in memories of McLennan; 2015's Songs to Play; and 2023's The Candle and the Flame, whose tracks explore aging and accumulated experience, shaped partly by the concurrent cancer battle faced by his wife and musical collaborator, Karin Bäumler.

A Brisbane native, Forster launched the Go-Betweens alongside McLennan at Queensland University in 1978. Through nearly as many personnel shifts as the six albums they released, the pair steered the group from austere, Factory Records-inflected art rock toward the polished commercial pop of their final release, 16 Lovers Lane in 1990. The band dissolved amid work on a projected follow-up, prompting Forster to take the compositions he had prepared and cut them in Berlin with fellow Australian expatriate Mick Harvey, formerly of the Birthday Party, and support from members of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds. The resulting Danger in the Past revived the stark early sound of the Go-Betweens and marked a fresh start for Forster, who had grown dissatisfied with the glossy production of the band's later records.

If Danger in the Past echoed the Go-Betweens' Before Hollywood, then Calling from a Country Phone in 1993 aligned with the band's strongest middle-period work, such as Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express. Largely setting aside the tension of its predecessor, the album restored the eccentric yet melodically rich folk-rock style Forster favors. While tracking that record he also assembled a collection of covers, issued the next year as I Had a New York Girlfriend. Rejoined by Harvey and Conway Savage of the Bad Seeds, Forster reshaped the material so thoroughly that tracks ranging from Heart's "Alone" to Martha & the Muffins' "Echo Beach" registered as his own.

Warm Nights, released in 1996 and produced by longtime friend Edwyn Collins, extended this creative momentum by layering strings and brass across Forster's songs, evoking a lo-fi counterpart to the Go-Betweens' final two albums. The leaner approach benefited the material. At that juncture Forster and McLennan resumed collaboration, first with the retrospective Bellavista Terrace and the 1978–79 archival release The Lost Album in late 1998, then with U.S. touring and the new studio album The Friends of Rachel Worth in 2000—their first in ten years. Two further albums and a live DVD appeared before McLennan's passing in 2006. Forster's next solo effort, The Evangelist, arrived in 2008 and included the final pieces the pair had developed together.

Although new recordings remained absent for some time, Forster stayed active through the late 2000s and 2010s. He produced albums for Brisbane acts the John Steel Singers and Halfway, contributed criticism to The Monthly (later gathered in the volume The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll), and oversaw the G Stands for Go-Betweens box-set series. In September 2015 he issued Songs to Play, assisted by Scott Bromiley and Luke McDonald of the John Steel Singers. Penguin published his memoir Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens in 2016. In 2018 Forster returned to Berlin to work once more with Victor Van Vugt, the engineer on Danger in the Past. Backed by a rock quartet, he recorded nine new songs for Inferno, among them a setting of W.B. Yeats' "Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgement," first performed live in Dublin during the poet's 150th-birthday events in 2013. Tapete released the album in early 2019.

Forster's subsequent album, The Candle and the Flame, comprised nine songs largely completed before Karin Bäumler's ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2021. Over six months, Forster, Bäumler, and additional musicians—including their children Loretta and Louis—recorded in intermittent sessions timed around her treatment. The flexible schedule favored immediacy and atmosphere over polished execution, suiting some of Forster's most intimate writing, which reflects on earlier selves, present identity, and the central role of family. The Candle and the Flame appeared in February 2023.