New album by Robert Forster: Ex-Go-Betweens singer sings about strawberries

Those were wonderful years with the Go-Betweens from Brisbane. From their first album, released in 1981, until their demise, they were a beloved band for indie rock fans. They could have stayed that way forever.

Their last album came in 2005. For "Oceans Apart," their ninth album overall and the third in the band's second spring of the 2000s, songwriters and musicians Robert Forster and Grant McLennan were once again celebrated – as a kind of Lennon & McCartney of indie. It was one of those records that morphs from "apart" to "sexy" in the ear. They achieved a solemnity à la "Penny Lane" on "Darlinghurst Nights," their first song with horns. They would certainly still be making music together today if McLennan hadn't died of a heart attack almost exactly a year after the album's release.

So, instead, Robert Forster (67) is now releasing his ninth solo album. It's called "Strawberries" and is a musical delight. The opening song, "Tell It Back to Me," lulls you to sleep with harmonica, jingle-jangle guitars, and love. It's about a relationship between very different people who don't care about their differences, want to get married, have children, and then split up, only to try again on the advice of friends.

Second springs are Forster's thing. His world shines brightly, like spring – after the very dark previous album.

It was called "The Candle and The Flame" (2023) and was released after Forster's German wife, violinist Karin Bäumler-Forster, was diagnosed with a serious cancer. Although only the album opener, "She's A Fighter," was actually written after the diagnosis, the Guardian saw the "shadow of mortality" hanging over the album.

The new album was recorded in Stockholm, directed by Peter Morén (of Peter, Björn & John) and featuring Swedish musicians. So everything sounds like a band again, and definitely like Go-Betweens. The amusing eight-minute "Breakfast on The Train" tells the story of two people who have sex after seeing each other for the first time since school, much to the annoyance of their hotel roommates. In "Foolish I Know," Forster slips into the shoes of a gay man who falls in love with a straight man.

Folk, pop, and rock 'n' roll resonate. "Diamonds" not only has the guitar ping of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." And when Lina Langendorf lets her saxophone soar, one is inclined to agree with "Musikreviews," whose critic Werner Herpell sees this as a possible magnum opus for the artist.

The Forsters have been married for 35 years and are parents of two children. Although there is no real update on Bäumler-Forster's health, the two sing radiantly in the folk-jazz title song, in a call-and-response manner, that they could have eaten all the "extraordinarily tasty" strawberries.

In the video, she can be seen happily playing ping-pong in her kitchen. "It took some time to recover," he sings, and she finishes the sentence with "back from the knife edge." Sounds like a happy ending.

Robert Forster – “Strawberries” (wallpaper)