Why do you like The Go-Betweens?

Ask a simple question…

• Too hard; the all too rare ability to combine talent, taste, style, and wide-ranging themes in a peerless body of work.
• 1. The work of lively minds. 2. A bridge between adolescence and adulthood (mine and theirs) which is open both ways… and if you stand in the middle, you can see both sides. 3. Self-awareness + lack of self-consciousness. 4. An understanding that poetry doesn’t fit into pop music… but pop music can fit into poetry, if you hold it at just the right angle.
• 5. The other reasons.
• Their attention to detail, the squiggles and swerves that elevate them above music that seems superficially similar.
• The fucking songs.
• The drama between the boys and the girls always made for good solid tunes
• They had soul.
• Before Hollywood goes places no one had gone before and no one has gone since. Weird rhythms, time signatures and structures. And yet it sounded absolutely natural. It was a botanic garden in the concrete horror of 1983. They continued with that spirit in the composition but much of the unique style fell away after that, viola and oboe notwithstanding.
• There is something so pure and nostalgic about their music. It’s classic and yet nostalgic.
• Tallulah
• I’m from Brisbane, it’s the law.
• 16 Lovers Lane
• They had melody offset with darkness in a way that wasn’t cliched.
• I like pop that flushes backwards.
• I love the confidence of it. Self-belief. And how it changed and grew over time, got more “adult” and “sophisticated”, but stayed very natural. That.
• Like the best contemporary fiction each song is deceptively sophisticated; simple language used on everyday life, but you fuckin try it.
• True artists.
• Obviously not for everyone. Or they woulda been huge.
• The lyrics and the melodies and the overall feels get under one’s skin. The striped sunlit sound.
• Because this is perfect pop…

• When the rain hits the roof, like the sound of a finished kiss, like a lip lifted from a lip.
• It’s in the rules.

• The best drumming.
• Because it sounds like home.
• Luxurious urgency.
• Because they went halfway round the world to Scotland to make a less grandstanding but better record than anyone else on Postcard, were roundly ignored, went home and then came back for more. I was going to say, “and also the music”, but that IS the music.
• It’s the Brisbane sound. You have to like it.

by Everett True

My name is Everett True. I am a music critic. This is what I do. I criticise music. The clue is in my job description – music critic. I do not consider myself a journalist, as I do not research or report hard news. I do not consider myself a commentator as I believe that everyone should be a participant. I criticise people and in return I am not surprised if other people criticise me. It is part of the whole deal of being in the public arena. I am Everett True. Believe in me and I have power like a God. Quit believing in me and I no longer exist.