RAW PARADOX
THE GO-BETWEENS ‘Send Me A Lullabye’ (Rough Trade Rough 45)*****
LET ME (again) discover the next big (small) thing. The temptation is immense! But with ‘Send Me A Lullabye’, however good, it wouldn’t work and it isn’t (worst of all for poor Critic!) meant to.
The Go-Betweens, sporting (right word, they’re Aussies) a pedigree from the great Postcard, have made an extremely clever debut LP with an irony in its title so hugely SUBTLE that it makes me want to give up. This is too hard!
Go-Betweens are the most perverse pop group ever. Their sense of synchronicity, which runs as far as this being RT catalogue Number 45 (as in single), is most significant when it reflects that GBs are a three, not the classic four piece. They, above all in their songs, twisted sick songs to a one, lack something.
They lack totally escapism. I don’t like this! A long way therefore from Dolby or Haircut talents, though they share something thereabouts too. But Go-Betweens’ songs are about the spaces not the substance.
Go-Betweens are no surrealism. They have an almost violent sense of the absurd. ‘Send Me A Lullabye’, a title as rich in suggestion as is the music inside, is about ennui. It uses pop to cruel effect, while showcasing the very best, say, of an Orange Juice.
The Go-Betweens | Send Me A Lullabye | (Rough Trade) 1982
Go-Betweens are like Haircut 100 joined by David Byrne. You expect clear-cut classic pop, which you do get to an extent, and you get cryptic messages from the real world. It’s an uncomfortable, strategically ‘mundane’ sound that, once you have let the little hooks and supposedly romantic-sounding guitar breaks seep into your overfed escapist skull — once this happens, and you’re all smiles like this Escapist Fed Critic, then the scary ennui breaks in. It gets sickeningly bitter sweet.
The funny thing is it tells a bleeding story as well. Just when the Critic thought Go-Betweens, yes, definitely wrote purely in their lyrics arbitrary nonsense (which wasn’t bad but wasn’t great either), tiny snatches of lyrics from Side One tells of the break-up of a love affair with a film star —who gets killed by the (male) author in the end (Side One, the song ‘Eight Pictures’) because of this.
This is so subliminally delivered! It’s as if Go-Betweens are just about on top of the arbitrary suggestiveness of all pop lyrics. They’re in control, but the authors’ hands are carefully veiled. ‘Eight Pictures’ by the way, as if (?) stretching Go-Betweens’ synchronicity to Skidoo’s ‘7 Songs’, ends with eight sharp violent drums banging. Scary stuff.
Side Two seems to brighten up and talk about (in the murder story plot) redemption, ‘Careless’ springing the drab flat pop to its feet with sprightly chorus and this time an untethered transcendental guitar effect, a la Orange Juice. ‘Hold Your Horses’ is even straight, would you believe it!
The overall effect is rather darkly. Go-Betweens refute the escapism of other Pops by saying they’re too clear-cut. They like too much to tell stories, the very thing surely GBs jape at here. Go-Betweens have a message, blurred and distorted as it should be, and it’s that pop’s best when its about the arbitrariness of real life.
And it should be a severe form of arbitrariness reflected at that. The Critic, still miffed, then rushes off to the toilet almost forgetting to say Go-Betweens are very like Franz Kafka . . . Rather amazing, with the emphasis on the ‘maze’. They, us, never get out of it. (Sounds, 05/06/82)
Send Me A Lullaby (Rough Trade)
THE GO-BETWEENS, a group to gradually grow into, have actually got buckets of appeal. It’s based on qualities which run sharply against a range of current grains, having little to do with parcelling the perimeters of feelings and stitching them into the glossy fabric of an immaculate tune.
Rather, The Go-Betweens emerge at a point much nearer feelings at a formative stage. To hear them is to watch a sentiment escape and awkwardly unfold. ‘Primitive’ might be an apt adjective. It describes both the rough beauty of their lyrics, and the way in which they play. The result is finally edgy, poignant, witty, naked and terse. It hurts a bit at first, but you get to like it soon. As they say.
Some detail: The Go-Betweens are three people, Lindy Morrison, (drums and one vocal), Grant McLennan (bass and several vocals), and Robert Forster (guitar and most vocals). They come originally from Melbourne, Australia, where (a friend Down Under assures me) they were pretty much ignored. They’ve been playing for about five years.
They were not, however, overlooked by Postcard’s Alan Horne, who moved in fast, recognising their mix of cracked rank amateurism and tragi-comic neuroticism as entirely in keeping with his label’s attitude and outlook.
A single, ‘I Need Two Heads’/’Stop Before You Say It’, appeared in 1980, scoring nicely in the alternative charts. By July ’81, the group could be found back home, recording an album in a Sydney studio for Aussie indie Missing Link; an album now licensed to Rough Trade, and, this very week, ‘Waiting For A Lullaby’ says a big hello-and-nice-to-be-back to the UK.
Maybe I’m forgetting, but this seems the least fussy, least pompous, most natural and moving music I’ve yet heard from their part of the planet. ‘Lullaby’ is a raw, rugged record, which leads you by the hand through a land of paradox and fatalism, pain, wry resignation and delightful irony.
Example? The enchanting ‘One Thing Can Hold Us’: “One thing can hold us/one thing can break us . . . it’s the same thing!”
Maybe I’m just daft, but so much that makes their insight and intelligence really work is exemplified in those lines.
The Go-Betweens’ vulnerability is perfectly foiled by their noise, an identifiably post-Velvets-cum-electric folk amalgam of treble and discord which helps inject a wounding frailty into their often lovely melodies and eccentric rhythmic rambles. Its clumsiness bolsters its confused emotions, its melancholia matches the wonderment and worry.
It’s also a record of tremendous depth, a mystery to be fathomed. I’m still sorting it out. You should start today. (NME, 26/06/82)
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