I thought this would a be a ten or fifteen-song list at most, but despite the expected lapses into passive musical accompaniment expected of strumming-addicted singer-songwriters, the solo work of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan boasts the same intelligence that the Go-Betweens flashed as a matter of course. When they went their separate ways in 1990, they presaged a couple of notable careers: Forster wrung out of Mick Harvey a reverb- and organ-heavy sound that Harvey would pursue with Polly Jean Harvey, while McLennan and John Keane reclaimed a kind of pastoral secondhand Americana out of step with Keane’s former clients R.E.M. A comp released a decade ago gathered most of these tunes, as powerful a collective statement as any Go-Be’s album. for the curious, seek Danger in the Past and Horsebreaker Star if you want a distillation of their strengths: Forster’s wry take on the legacy of friends dead and dying while he falls deeper in love, and McLennan’s use of American musical tropes to create a formalist bulwark against deep feeling.
1. Baby Stones
2. Put You Down
3. Stones For You
4. Danger in the Past
5. Pandanus
6. Lighting Fires
7. Haven’t I Been a Fool
8. Demon Days
9. Tender Years
10. Horsebreaker Star
11. Beyond the Law
12. I’ve Been Looking for Somebody
13. Ice in Heaven
14. Don’t You Cry For Me No More
15. I Love Myself (And I Always Have)
16. The Road
17. Coming Up For Air
18. If It Rains
19. If I Was a Girl
20. Easy Come Easy Go
21. Black Mule
22. It Ain’t Easy
23. Thought That I Was Over You
24. 121
25. In Your Bright Ray
Humanizing The Vacuum 