#the go betweens
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Music Recommendations Part 5
1. Carry the Zero - Built to Spill
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2. Obstacle 1 - Interpol
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3. Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran
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4. Love Goes On! - The Go-Betweens
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5. Man in the Box - Alice in Chains
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6. Ghosts - Japan
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7. Little Fury Things - Dinosaur Jr.
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8. Suffer Little Children - The Smiths
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9. Shine On - The House of Love
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10. Flying Man - Louis Philippe
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#music recommendations#music recs#music#alternative rock#rock#rock music#indie rock#new wave#grunge#grunge rock#minimal music#built to spill#interpol#duran duran#the go betweens#alice in chains#japan band#dinosaur jr#the smiths#the house of love#louis philippe#mother#earthbound#Youtube
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Another winter when you're still the poet, and not the muse.
#dark acadamia aesthetic#dark romanticism#dark academia#romantic academia#the go betweens#my muse#lovecore#aesthetics
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BANDS: MEAT PUPPETS and the GO-BETWEENS, 1987
The Go-Betweens' "Cattle and Cane" might be one of the greatest singles of the '80s - one of those songs I remember hearing early in the decade that made me optimistic for what was to come. I photographed the band when they came through Toronto in 1987 mostly because my favorite local band, The Lawn, was opening for them at the El Mocambo; their lead singer Gord was a huge fan, and he got me hyped about the show. I don't know if I managed to place these pics, however, so their publication on my old blog might have been their first appearance anywhere, though that was enough to get a couple of them in The Go-Betweens: Right Here, a 2017 documentary about the band.
The band were not prepared for a photo shoot when I showed up at soundcheck, so my single roll of portraits was done with five slightly put-out people. What I remember is that they seemed like adults - moreso than almost any other band I'd photographed up till then - though several of my frames were spoiled when drummer Lindy Morrison couldn't stifle a giggle. I was, as with everything else around this time, working against the limits of my competence with my Mamiya and a flash bounced into an umbrella, so I'm amazed that anything turned out at all worth reprinting over 35 years later. One thing I wish is that I'd asked guitarist and singer Grant McLennan (the man who wrote "Cattle and Cane") to take off his sunglasses. Bassist Robert Vickers would leave the band after this tour. Grant McLennan died in 2006 of a heart attack.
My first regular subject as a photographer was our local hardcore scene - basically the place my editors at the Nerve sent me when I showed up and asked for assignments. But hardcore punk was undergoing a metamorphosis at the time, embodied in two bands I shot early on - the Minutemen and the Meat Puppets. Between their first record in 1982 and their third, Up On The Sun, in 1985, they'd gone from being one of the more abrasive bands in the SST stable of bands to the grooviest - a transformation that contined with the two records they released in 1987, Mirage and Huevos, though I couldn't tell you which one they were promoting when they arrived at RPM, the cavernous warehouse-turned-club on Toronto's waterfront where I photographed them.
My shoot with the Meat Puppets would have been called ambitious by me at the time, mostly because I brought a backdrop. They were a southwestern band from Arizona, so I was inspired to bring a Mexican blanket from my apartment - a souvenir my sister and her husband had been given by her in-laws, which by that point mostly lived on my futon couch; give me a break for at least trying something. It wasn't a very big blanket, though, so I had drummer Derrick Bostrom and the two Kirkwood brothers, Curt and Cris, jam themselves together next to my flash and umbrella. The biggest challenge was managing the band's mugging for the camera - almost inevitably a problem when photographing a band. The Meat Puppets would go through a lot of lineup changes over the years, with two breakups, but they're back together with the original trio along with a keyboardist and Curt's son Elmo on guitar.
#the go betweens#meat puppets#punk rock#hardcore punk#portrait#portrait photography#photography#film photography#musicians#bands#band photography#1987#mamiya c330#early work#some old pictures i took
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325: The Go-Betweens // 16 Lovers Lane
16 Lovers Lane
The Go-Betweens
1988, Mushroom
You don’t need to put a gun to my head: I’m a Robert Forster guy. Everyone agrees that Australian jangle pop legends the Go-Betweens had two first-class brilliant songwriters under their tent, but Grant McLennan tends to get the edge in most people’s books, even if they don’t exactly come out and say it. He had the sweeter voice and the more direct way with melody; wrote most of their best-known songs (“Cattle and Cane”; “Bachelor Kisses”; “Streets of Your Town”) and might have the higher overall batting average when it comes to quality; enjoyed the more consistent solo career; even died first. I love Grant! But I’ve always been more drawn to Robert’s wordy complications, his slightly dour, guarded stripes of shadow to Grant’s sunlight. Both very bright men gifted with an ear for melody, both serially doubtful in their lyrics, with McLennan I have the sense that he trusts himself to be guided by feel whereas Forster leads with his intelligence. Normally, the latter would be a minor indictment of an artist, but at Forster’s best the results are neither cold nor stiff. His songs have a complex character in the literary sense, made lively by their contradictions and keenly observed behaviours. When a pristine, jangling hook breaks through his typical reserve, it’s like he’s been moved to sincerity despite himself, and I’m moved in turn.
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On 16 Lovers Lane, their last album together before an 11-year hiatus, real-life circumstances conspired to cast each songwriter in their most representative mood. McLennan was in the midst of a relatively new relationship with violinist Amanda Brown, and there’s an impulsiveness to the way his songs document the highs and lows of romance, even as one senses all’s not entirely well under the hood. Meanwhile, Forster writes with the sobriety of hindsight as he grapples with the recent dissolution of his own partnership with drummer Lindy Morrison. (Bassist John Willsteed’s feelings about not having an on-stage date are unknown at this time.) This difference makes 16 Lovers Lane both a relationship record and a breakup record, each songwriter exploring love from his own side of the divide. Grant’s songs are all gems: “Love Goes On!,” “Quiet Heart,” and especially “Devil’s Eye” make the adult work of negotiating life with another person sound like something to dreamily twirl around the house to, while the saucy crazy chick sketch “Was There Anything I Could Do?” rivals the Smiths at their most revved up. His “Streets of Your Town,” the band’s closest thing to a hit, isn’t explicitly about love, but retains the bemused contrast between form and content that marks many of his 16 Lovers songs—the way it’s possible to experience happiness even as the future seems increasingly murky.
It’s Forster’s songs however that raise 16 Lovers Lane from another very good Go-Betweens record to the short list of my all-time favourite rock albums. What makes these songs so poignant is that, while Forster’s insights into his relationships are sensitive, empathetic, even wise, it’s also clear he’s in that daze of post-breakup delusion when you still love someone and aren’t yet ready to accept what “over” really means. I adore the surreal visual, from “Love is a Sign,” that marks his first words on the record: “I’m ten feet underwater / Standing in a sunken canoe / Looking up at the waterlilies / They’re green and violet-blue / Still the sun it finds / A place to light me.” Throughout the song he gently, charmingly acknowledges the real problems at hand, but all he has to offer is the fantasy that one day something will be different, that he’ll be different, and then things will be as they were. The chorus (“This is what I find / No matter what you say / No matter what you do / I want to be the one / And love is a sign”) can read as a declaration of unconditional love, but from another angle, it’s a blanket denial of the possibility that the other person might not be right for him.
Throughout the record, a lot of Forster’s most basic assertions can be immediately disproven. “You Can’t Say No Forever”: The public record shows she could!
“I’m Allright”: A cursory read of the song’s lyrics suggests otherwise!
On “Dive for Your Memory,” he closes the record by declaring:
“Now I dive black waters
The waters of her dream
Are black and forgetful
I'd like to make them clean
So when I hear you saying
That we stood no chance
I'll dive for your memory
We stood that chance”
Not having been there, I can’t say whether he’s right or wrong. What happens in this life isn’t fated. But to me it smacks of a man standing at the last station before real acceptance, when you feel that before you can truly let go you must demand some dignity for what you had. It is too galling to endure thinking this relationship you poured your soul into was anything less than a vessel that deserved the commitment; that you squandered your best self on a fantasy. Therefore, it must’ve been a Great Romance, and you bend all of your creative powers to constructing it as such. After enough time has passed, this sort of emotional absolutism fades and you can live with how things really were. But in the moment, there is nothing more terrible to endure than the notion you are performing in a tragedy the other party perceives as a farce.
Despite all this baggage, the wonder is how Forster’s words nestle within absolutely pristine jangle pop songs, sparkly and spangly and crystalline and all the other words critics use to try to pull their sweetness from the air to the page. It was years before I really dug into what Forster was saying because of the way he says it, part Tom Verlaine, part Gene Clark. And, like McLennan with “Streets of Your Town,” he also takes one song off the Rumours beat to offer a more introspective number that both demonstrates his pure pop gifts and summarizes the outlook he brought to the sessions. “Clouds” feels like taking a much-needed walk to clear your head, to get back in touch with who you are at the root:
“Blue air I crave, blue air I breathe
They once chopped my heart,
The way you chop a tree
Told to equate
Achievement with pain
I took their top prize
And paid them back with rain
Visions of blue,
I’m angry, I’m wise,
And you
You’re under cloudy skies.”
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325/365
#the go betweens#robert forster#grant mclennan#australian music#brisbane#brisbane music#jangle pop#indie rock#singer songwriter#rumours#music review#vinyl record#'80s music
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The Go-Betweens - World Weary
#the go betweens#world weary#robert forster#grant mclennan#lindy morrison#dan wallace-crabbe#post punk#jangle pop#your turn my turn#7'' single#b side#1981#Youtube
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Robert Forster *June 29, 1957
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One Bird in the Sky by Robert Forster
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the curse of adhd:
i will remember with absolute clarity, when the thought strikes me that i have a text to send someone, that this is the fourth time in three days i've attempted to send this specific text
i will forget, in the time it takes me to pick up my phone, that i picked it up intending to send a text
#every time#managed to actually send it today!#but also i have been reminded to post this by the fact that i just had a task to do in two different rooms just now#so i turned the light on in the room i was getting to second because my brain would go 'oh why is the light on that's weird'#and check the room and it would remind me to do the second task#in the less than five seconds between turning the light on and exiting the room#my brain went 'oh the light's on better turn that off before i leave'#and i had to manually catch myself#PLS.#adhd
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Thinking a LOT about Lucifer in the latest Hazbin episode. Idk what I was expecting but not this??
As I was watching my immediate thought was just "huh... Lucifer is kinda of weird..." but as the episode went on I realized the issue
the dude is off the chain depressed, like he says it as a joke but holy cow it is SO BAD
He's manically just creating rubber ducks cuz his daughter really like it that one time but it's empty, it's never good enough but he keeps doing it, maybe cuz he doesn't know how to pass the time otherwise.
like I get the feeling he HAS better things he SHOULD be doing than making rubber duck after rubber duck. At first I was like, "Bruh why isn't the king of hell doing anything?" aaaaand then it became clear...
The dude is disassociating so bad he can barely hold a conversation let alone remember information. He clearly WANTS to, he wants to be involved with his daughter so bad, he wants to care about the things she's doing so bad, but his depression keeps interfering. It's like he can only hear every other word and he grasps onto the ones he does hear semi-out of context. Like you can see every time he catches something that he hadn't before and he just "well shit I didn't catch that part"
and that's why he reacts so weird when people talk to him. He is struggling so bad to engage with the conversation he's only getting 50% of it
does that look like the face of a man who knows what the hell the conversation is even about??? he is STRUGGLING
like Charlie spent so long telling him about the hotel, and he STILL didn't understand what she wanted. Yeah it comes off as ditzy but literally I've been in that position where your brain just "nope, not doing this right now" and nerfs your conversation comprehension. So as someone who's BEEN in that position, to me it feels exactly like what he's dealing with. He's sorta engaged with the conversation, but only as much as his brain will allow
For example, when I'm dealing with this, this is what someone talking to me feels like this where the crossed out parts are what I missed and bold is what I catch, "Hey! You know I was thinking for dinner we could either make some chicken with rice? But if you don't feel like cooking, pasta is super easy and you love that right? What do you want to do?" you can kinda get that someone is trying to talk to you about dinner, and towards the end you get the impression that they asked something that needs your input so you can decently put 2 and 2 together and try and pass off, but crucial bits were left out, I would have no idea that either chicken or pasta is in the conversation only having heard "rice". When someone is just talking at me, I can decently pass off as being engaged but the second I'm required to participate in the conversation I'm screwed. Seem familiar? At which point I have 2 options, try to give a bullshit answer, or admit that I missed what they were saying and ask them to repeat
Lucifer, unfortunately, is trying so damn hard to hide that he's dealing with like 24/7 dissociation, so he can't admit that he's missing entire chunks of the conversation, hence his really weird replies. He does eventually get the full picture and then he and Charlie start having the real conversation
Also, the Alastor/Lucifer rivalry was hilarious but also really indicative of more of what Lucifer is dealing with
Alastor is, unfortunately, really good at picking up people's insecurities, and thanks to Charlie's description earlier and watching Lucifer clearly trying to overcompensate, he immediately picks up on the fact that Lucifer KNOWS he struggles to be a good dad (we know cuz it's cuz of the depression, hard to be engaged when your brain keeps turning off) and decides to rub salt in the wound by pretending he's been acting as a surrogate father to Charlie. Now why Alastor decided to pick a fight with the king of hell is beyond me, I do not understand Alastor (and I LIKE IT) (maybe it's cuz Alastor thinks he's hot shit and was expecting Lucifer to at least have heard of him but Lucifer just treats him like a nobody? who knows)(why would Lucifer listen to radio anyways when he can't even pay attention to a conversation it'd just be white noise)
But yeah I just was expecting someone who oozed either charisma or presence and instead I got a depressed dad who's dissociating so bad he can barely function and be present in his life. The only thing it seems he CAN do is make rubber ducks cuz his daughter really liked it that one time
Idk Lucifer is tragic to me. Whatever the full details of what heavan did to him absolutely broke him and he can't deal with it. He's aware of it, and he doesn't know how to fix it, so he tries to over compensate and sorta makes an ass out of himself but no one says or does anything cuz this guy is supposed to be THE king of hell
Suddenly it's making a lot more sense why he just rolls over and lets heaven do what it wants and even told Charlie to go in his place the start of the show. He's not in any headspace to hold a basic conversation let alone negotiate! He didn't even know who Alastor was, he's been so out of touch
idk I like him, he seems sweet, I hope Charlie brings some light back into his life. He really needs to get out of that rubber duck room
#hazbin spoilers#hazbin hotel#lucifer#lucifer morningstar#analysis#dissociation#look idk what to tell you all#I watched the episode and everything makes so much more sense#when you realize he's only intaking like 50-60% of the conversations#he's not bad at listening his brain is literally preventing him from getting everything#literally I've been there#the difference between him and me tho#is that he can't show it#he's the king of hell#he has to bluff his way through conversations#but yeah literally rewatch the episode with this in mind#and watch him reply to the things he DID catch#anyways#NEW BLORBO????#who'd've thought I would go into Hazbin Hotel#and come out with freaking LUCIFER as my favorite character#I love him#he's so sad
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