Consumer Guide Album

The Go-Betweens: Spring Hill Fair [Beggars Banquet, 1996]
In the Indian summer of a formal moment, singer-songwriter-guitarists Robert Forster and Grant McLennan joined a shifting lineup headed by steadfast drummer-inamorata Lindy Morrison and mercurial violinist-inamorata Amanda Brown to fashion as deep and intricate and prematurely mature a body of traditional relationship songs as, oh, Joni Mitchell herself, who should only have accessed half their empathy and synergy. Hiding their hooks in arrangements and lyrics as often as they brandished them in tunes, they were modest, affectionate, funny, cheerful, never too oblique or ironic--pop for the ages if anything is. But with the 1978-1990 compilation now import-only, novice songseekers are confronted instead by a remastered, reannotated six-album oeuvre. So acquire them all, I guess, thusly: Tallulah (1987, Amanda and "Right Here"), Spring Hill Fair (1984, produced yet rough), Before Hollywood (1983, austere yet gorgeous), 16 Lovers Lane (1988, poppest), Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express (1986, talkiest), Send Me a Lullaby (1981, punkest). Accounted too damn subtle for a U.S. market whose favorite Aussies were MTV flukes and whose favorite Brits had surrealistic haircuts, these Brisbane-bred Londoners' first three albums were never accorded the decency of official U.S. release. This is my paltry attempt to extend a nation's apology. A