dancing about architecture: Go-Betweens Essay

Way back in 1988 – before Nirvana, before Liz Phair, before Stephin Merritt, even before young George W. had his father's presidential coattails to model in the mirror – an obscure, star-crossed Aussie collective called the Go-Betweens watched their sixth studio long-player hit the record-store racks then, like the previous five, sink quickly into the murky cut-out bins of the pop netherworld. Just months afterward, the band themselves followed suit.

Fans who've come late but enthusiastically to the Go-Betweens' recondite little catalog might be surprised to learn that the group's breakup resulted in no national holidays, few tear-stained obituaries and relatively rare reports of prolonged hand-wringing. The fact is, even by the modest standards of that fabled point in time when anti-stars like the Replacements and They Might Be Giants could claim something like "a name" in the popular vocabulary, the Go-Betweens were truly inconspicuous, truly alternative. Mention them to the adventurous listener base that should have been theirs 15 years ago and, chances are, you'd get little more than quizzical looks and shrugged shoulders.

Although they're still far from candidates for a big "Behind the Music" biopic, time has afforded the Go-Betweens something like their due. 1996, for starters, saw the re-release of the band's entire oeuvre, along with more than a bit of critical reevaluation. In retrospect – and on CD – seemingly lesser albums like Send Me a Lullaby and Before Hollywood sounded equal parts of their time and ahead of it; the production squarely early-1980s Brit-pop, the songcraft the work of artists whose opaque lyricism and skewed romantic vision transcended short-term trends and continued to gain resonance as the years pass. The good-to-great albums, of course – Spring Hill Fair, Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express, Tallulah (still their masterpiece) and 16 Lovers Lane – simply sounded better and greater.

But it was probably1999s one-two punch – a best-of titled Bellavista Terrace backed by a rare tour by the 'Tweens principals, Grant McLennan and Robert Forster – that finally got the old embers stoked once and for all. Young pups who weren't out of short pants back when the band was plying its trade on the edge of oblivion got to witness its quirky, subtle charm for the first time, while we oldsters got to relive the magic all over again. So what if the myth threatened to supplant the reality? For me and plenty of other die-hards, even a quasi-Go-Betweens reunion promised to be the musical event of the year. As for rumors of a full-blown comeback, well, only the basest cynic would deny the band (and its fans) their day in the sun after more than two decades languishing on the pop periphery.

It wasn't until the rumors were confirmed months later (a new album! another tour!) that I started to sweat the details. After all, rock and roll comebacks are, under the best of circumstances, troublesome undertakings, risking sentimentality and nostalgia on one hand and crass, take-the-money-and-run pud-pounding on the other. Most often, though, bands simply fail to ignite the spark that powered their muse the first time around, and I shuttered at the thought of listless, hackneyed versions of "Right Here" or "Draining the Pool for You" besmirching a legacy that was just getting the requisite shine to it. Even the news that McLennan and Forster had tapped members of Sleater-Kinney (!) for their post-penultimate recording didn't quell my fears that the Go-Betweens circa 2000 might not rediscover the delicate chemistry that made the 80s edition such a secret gem.

Well, silly me.

No, the new album –titled, in characteristically obtuse fashion, The Friends of Rachel Worth –probably won't supplant your current front-runner as The Best CD You'll Hear All Year. It's too modest, too determinedly temperate for that. But it's better than any fan had a right to expect it would be. And, down the road, it's going to sound just fine in the company of Tallulah, Spring Hill Fair and the rest, which is both its singular achievement and – in light of the Go-Betweens' fastidious career to date – its only reason for being in the first place.

It's not an accident, I think, that The Friends of Rachel Worth feels more like an extension of the two-men-and-their-guitars McLennan/Forster concert tour than, say, 16 Lovers Lane. Even backed by the rock and roll firepower available courtesy of the Washington state contingent (my CD came with a sticker labeled "Featuring Sleater-Kinney"; talk about the semi-popular leading the semi-popular), the tunes – particularly Robert Forster’s – present themselves more as ruminative acoustic sketches than full-blown Go-Betweens pop statements; "Spirit," "He Lives My Life" and "When She Sang About Angels" in particular are attractive skeletons begging for a few extra studio layers, a few extra harmonies, a little more sound. At the same time, though, they do provide an effective foil for McLennan's slightly more realized, slightly less idiosyncratic contributions, which could easily pass for the band's late-80s rejects if a few ("The Clock," "Heart and Home," "Magic in Here") weren't actually superior to some of the songs that made it onto the older albums.

So where does that leave us? I'd say with a sly, deceptively minor-seeming piece of work whose exceeding diffidence is both its asset and a liability. Chances are, McLennan and Forster never meant to hit the ball out the park with The Friends of Rachel Worth – if that meant some first-class songs get short shrift, it also meant that no one will mistake this for the second coming of Tallulah. It's a hedge, yes, but a purposeful hedge, recognizing the potential pitfalls of a pop-music comeback even as it promises more and better things ahead.

Personally, I wouldn't have minded a full-scale Go-Betweens reunion offensive, one aimed at nothing short of reclaiming their former lofty perch. But I also respect musicians with a sense of their strengths, their audience and their place in history. At their best, the Go-Betweens will never sell 500,000 units, never convert the MTV crowd, never crack drivetime radio playlists. So why not get your real fan base behind you with a record that neither undermines their expectations nor advances them? In the end, The Friends of Rachel Worth accomplishes exactly what it needed to. And in that sense, it accomplishes even more.