By STEPHEN DOWLING
It's been 12 years since 16 Lovers Lane, the album that pulled the curtain on the career of one of Australia's most distinguished bands, and proof that Brisbane culture extended to more than backyard barbecues and Gold Coast casinos.
In that time, the songwriting partnership of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan that gave birth to six albums had drifted apart. There were occasional Go-Betweens' shows and an acoustic tour last year, but the Go-Betweens were fast becoming the stuff of pop folklore, exhibit A in the litany of well-deserving bands who never quite made it.
But, according to Forster and McLennan, it was never supposed to be the end of the road. Now the tale gets another chapter, The Friends Of Rachel Worth, the seventh album that gives Forster and McLennan's magnificent musical partnership a fresh lease on life a year after the excellent best-of Bellavista Terrace rekindled interest.
Forster and McLennan are sitting in the lobby of London's Columbia Hotel, a slightly down-at-heel establishment in which every touring band on the planet seems to have kipped at least once.
A few days before, they performed a secret show as a duo, playing tracks off the new album and a sprinkling of old Go-Betweens' numbers and solo tracks, the basement club so packed with London's rock hacks that if fire had broken out the city's music press would have crumbled overnight. The reaction to their new record has been universally positive.
"The response has taken us both a little by surprise," says the easygoing McLennan. "We know we've made a good record and everyone sees it as part of the journey.
"Last year we were doing this tour and it seemed like people from 18 to 50 were coming up to us. That's an amazing fan base. And I know people who've got into the band because of my solo stuff or Robert's. A few people didn't even know I was in a band before."
But in the hit-today, forgotten-tomorrow world of pop music, 12 years is a long time to be taking a break. They deny there was any acrimony in their decision to break up the band in 1989 (amid rumours that their final tour supporting REM had been an unhappy affair). Why so long to get back into a studio?
"The time wasn't right, we weren't in the right headspace," says McLennan. "I was living in Australia and Robert spent some time in Germany. But supporting that best-of [Bellavista Terrace] last year, it felt good to be doing it again night after night. We just realised this was effortless.
The old Go-Betweens haven't all been reunited for the album - bassist Robert Vickers evidently now handles their press in the United States - and Lindy Morrison and Amanda Brown are no longer part of the lineup. But after Forster and McLennan played a gig in San Francisco last year and announced they would be recording a new album, the American riot girls Sleater-Kinney introduced themselves and demanded to be involved.
They found a studio in Portland, Oregon (the same one used by singer-songwriter Elliott Smith) and Forster flew from Germany to Brisbane to work on songs before the studio came free.
"What Robert and I didn't want to do was work with session people with big budgets and get into debt and do that boring major label thing. A lot of the bands I hang around with in Australia work in a similar way, and they sell a heap of records. In a way we might even be connected to a scene now which we're going to rebel against," he says with a wry smile.
The Friends Of Rachel Worth is nearly as good as the band's 1988 swansong 16 Lovers Lane, and echoes albums like Tallulah and Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express.
McLennan says the feel of the record, mixed by German dance producer Mario Thaler for a more upfront atmosphere, fits in well with what has gone before.
It also finds the pair - the softly garrulous McLennan and the tall, dry Forster - hugely happy at being back in each other's company.
"I don't wish to diss the other members of the band," Forster says in his mannered voice, "but it feels good just having the two of us. At times, having five people, it feels like tramping through mud. It feels good now, like we can do anything."
Forster, too, is happy that the pair are still making music without having to endure the poverty that marked their early years, decamping from Brisbane to London, living in squats with Nick Cave's old band the Birthday Party.
"It was hard. Every year was different ... different friends, different flats, different record deals. And you can hear it in the music. I think it was the big sacrifice for the music. You wouldn't be in London for five years for any other reason.
"But I knew I wouldn't have written The House That Jack Kerouac Built in Sydney. The poverty and hardship helped ... the art is good. Beyond that it seems dark."
Those dark times have gone. McLennan says he and Forster are carrying on like when they were teenagers, waxing about new bands and old hands like Patti Smith and Television, about films and art and TV shows.
And the new record, hopefully, will be the start of a new era for the Go-Betweens, back together in name and spirit after so long.
"I know I get great aural satisfaction from the album. It's very much a synthesis of the records we've done up to this point. The next one could go anywhere," McLennan smiles."
It could be one song that goes for 40 minutes. Possible, but unlikely.
The Friends of Rachel Worth is out now.
The revival of the Go-Betweens
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