It’s a testament to both the passion and prowess of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan that Oceans Apart sounds as immediate and important as anything they’ve released during their two-decades plus as The Go-Betweens.
The duo sound like men possessed on the driven album opener ‘Here Comes A City’, a distant cousin of Talking Heads’ ‘Life During Wartime’, where they’re aided by Adele Pickvance (bass, backing vocals) and Glenn Thompson (drums, backing vocals).
These songs are inhabited by fully-rounded characters, whose basic humanity leaps out of the songs, like the black boot-wearing heroine of ‘Lavender’, the teary-eyed subject of ‘Boundary Rider’ or the narrator of ‘The Statue’ who feels like just "another weary sinner". They’re still capable of gorgeous, dreamy-eyed wistfulness when the mood takes them, as evidenced by the almost whimsical ‘Finding You’.
‘Born To A Family’s chiming guitars and insistent melody is vintage Go-Betweens, so much so that this listener wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it was an out-take from the Liberty Belle sessions. Album centrepiece ‘Darlinghurst Years’ is a beautifully written epic of regret, nostalgia and melancholy, with some memorable imagery. Indeed, one of the real strengths of Forster and McLennan’s songwriting is their ability to paint the strongest of emotions with a lightness of touch, as on the beautiful ‘No Reason To Cry’, the bittersweet ‘Mountains Near Delray’ or the doo-wop chorus of ‘This Night’s For You’.
In fact, Oceans Apart is quite possibly the warmest, most welcoming album of sad songs you’re likely to hear this year, full of tunes that often ooze melancholy and bleed regretful tears, without ever dipping into the realms of self-pity or narcissism.