The Go Betweens:* * * * Right Here

       The Go Betweens are one of the finest bands ever to come out of Australia.

        But I reckon joining the Go Betweens would be like playing with Simon and Garfunkel and thinking you’re in a band.  Sorry but you’re in the Forster Mclennan  back up band.  
 Girlfriends couldn’t come between them, even if that's what the guys wanted. Yes, the admirable contribution of other members (especially Lindy Morrison ) is to be acknowledged, but in the end The Go Betweens is, was, and always has been, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan.  The Go Betweens could (and did) exist without any other member, but not without Forster or McLennan.

A crowded train, a silent night.

       This documentary is welcome, important and thankfully, it has been done well.

       There simply isn’t that much footage of The Go Betweens, but director Kriv Stendors judiciously fills in the gaps with lookalike actors seen from a distance or with obscured faces.

        The interviews with former members are generous and seemingly open - including the wounds. There is perceptive and intelligent commentary and observations from those who were around at the time, especially journalist Clinton Walker.  Interestingly, his knowledge is drawn on more than their biographer David Nichols.  (Maybe because Nichols book was published twenty years ago, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.)

         Rather than chasing down past band members, Stendors has chosen to bring them to us. They are interviewed in a beautiful country home. It’s almost as though the place symbolically stands as the band's post-life “house of reckoning” where each can explain things as they saw it.

       Naturally the great songs, “Cattle and Cane”, “Streets of your Town” and the extraordinary album “16 Lovers Lane” are all thoroughly discussed: And we are reminded that an album which clearly should have been album of the year was criminally ignored.  How hard would it have been for The Go Betweens to pick themselves up one more time after that? What more can you do?  Who could ever say to them “Try harder”? What a heartbreaker.

       After more ructions with internal affairs and coming and goings between the band members,  Mclennan and Forster went off and made four more excellent albums together, between 2000 and 2006, which were actually very good and sold well compared to most of their earlier material. The artistry was still there - of course it was. If you ask me, creatively these guys were married, for better or worse, until death us do part… which it did.

       If I have one small complaint with this otherwise excellent and most welcome documentary it is that it’s somewhat top heavy featuring their early material with little time given over to the last 4 albums, which do contain some outstanding songs.