The veteran US critic Robert Christgau once called Robert Forster and Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens the greatest songwriting partnership working (it was the 1980s at the time). But the Australian band never made it big. McLennan is no longer with us.
Forster, meanwhile, has a body of work attesting to his continued wry excellence, his songs replete with clear-eyed craft and emotional heft. But The Candle and the Flame, his eighth solo work, has added resonance. Mid-pandemic, Forster’s partner, Karin Bäumler, was diagnosed with cancer. Forster’s songs pre-date that diagnosis, and the chemo and the surgery. But as is the way of songwriting – witness the foreshadowing of Nick Cave’s Skeleton Key (2016), for instance – Forster’s songs examined healing, his love for Bäumler, and unexpected happenings “round the bend”. Forster was almost too embarrassed to reveal one song: She’s a Fighter.
