Robert Forster

The curtains for Robert Forster’s second Toff gig – his only two Melbourne appearances this year – opened to an unoccupied mic. Seated nearby for some final tuning on his acoustic guitar, Forster soon took his spot and broke into an unannounced cover of Yo La Tengo’s tender ‘The Whole Of The Law’. Standing tall, slender, and poised in a smart suit sans tie, Forster initially avoided stage banter and launched into ‘Pandanus’ from 2008’s The Evangelist. Prior to playing the Go-Betweens’ latter-day ‘Born To A Family’, he warmly mentioned opener Rebecca Barnard’s similarly titled ‘Born In A Shirt’.

Taken from the band’s post-hiatus album The Friends Of Rachel Worth, ‘German Farmhouse’ was followed by the new song ‘I’m So Happy For You’, for which Forster told the audience to imagine a band like Franz Ferdinand behind him. Thanks in part to its title, its sunny lyrics couldn’t help but read as sarcasm. The Go-Betweens’ ‘Spirit’ gave way to ‘Demon Days’, the devastating Evangelist standout written by Grant McLennan before he died suddenly in 2006.

Now looser and comfortable, Forster told a detailed story about the genesis of ‘Darlinghurst Nights’ from the final Go-Betweens album, Oceans Apart. It involved creative types fueled by strong coffee and huge pasta bowls in the 1980s in Darlinghurst. Joking that every Laughing Clowns song owes itself to that coffee, he played up and teased his own song’s vocal harmonies, seeming now less like his earlier model of composure and more like one’s kindly, slightly eccentric uncle.

Warm with the pleasure of reminiscence, he continued with a trio of Go-Betweens classics: ‘Spring Rain’, ‘Streets Of Your Town’ and ‘Clouds’. Forster then explained the origins of ‘Snakeskin Lady’ from his 1996 album Warm Nights. It was penned in the ’90s in Brisbane, where the scent of marijuana wafting through the backstreets reminded him of the band’s early days, when he and McLennan plotted to recruit the woman from the title as their drummer based simply on her appearance – she, of course, refused. Also from Warm Nights, the McLennan collaboration ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Friend’ was written from the perspective of Forster’s one-time live-in girlfriend, who worked days while he pursued the band at night.

The Go-Betweens’ ‘Spirit of A Vampyre’ gave way to the stirring ‘121’ from Forster’s Calling From A Country Phone. He admitted “generously” stealing the song’s opening riff from John Fogerty, and broke into a playful yet beautiful a cappella portion before closing the initial set. He returned to play ‘Danger In The Past’, the title track of his 1990 solo debut. A second encore brought the Go-Betweens’ ‘Surfing Magazines’, for which he invited the audience to sing the carefree harmonies, and his own archly debonair ‘Cryin’ Love’. Having played for around 90 minutes, Forster graciously made an exit, his brilliant catalogue lingering in the sleepy Sunday night.

by Doug Wallen