Rolling Stone story: The Go-Betweens Get Their Own Bridge
A short story for the September 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, about The Go-Between Bridge opening in Brisbane.
Click the below image for a closer look, or read the text underneath.
The Go-Betweens Get Their Own Bridge
by Andrew McMillen
In the tradition of Melbourne’s ACDC Lane, Queensland now has Go Between Bridge. In 2009, Brisbane residents voted to name the city’s newest river crossing after The Go-Betweens, who formed at the University of Queensland in 1977 and went on to achieve international acclaim. On June 25 this year, Robert Forster marked the structure’s completion with a concert on the bridge itself. Ahead of the event, Forster described the naming as “heart-warming, and a bit surreal”. Forster opened with “Steets Of Your Town” from 1988’s 16 Lovers Lane. The song was written by band co-founder Grant McLennan, who died from a heart attack in 2006, aged 48. Beforehand, a crowd of 5,000 witnessed Yves Klein Blue, The John Steel Singers, Bob Evans and Josh Pyke perform adjacent to the silent Brisbane skyline.
The above photo was taken by Brisbane-based music photographer Matt Palmer.
Elsewhere: I reported on this show at length for Mess+Noise. I also interviewed Robert Forster for M+N’s ‘Icons’ series a few weeks before The Go Between Bridge opened.
Filed under Published Writing | Tags: bridge, Brisbane, go-between, Journalism, mess-and-noise, Published Writing, robert-forster, rolling stone, Writing | Comment (0)Mess+Noise album review: Halfway
An album review for Mess+Noise.
Halfway - An Outpost Of Promise
Call them alt-country, call them roots-rock. The accuracy of genre identification matters not, as at the heart of the matter lies a simple fact: Brisbane’s Halfway are damned good songwriters. That the key writing duo of John Busby and Chris Dale are past winners of the Grant McLennan Fellowship - a $20,000 Arts Queensland grant – is not surprising given the strengths of their third LP.
Recorded by Wayne Connolly and featuring a Robert Forster production credit, it’s their most ambitious and considered work to date. Even at their most scintillating - ‘Sweetheart, Please Don’t Start’, a five-minute long, achingly beautiful epic - Halfway are characterised by a rare kind of understated cohesion. There are very few sharp edges on ‘Sweetheart’, and I don’t mean that as a backhanded compliment: it’s the most gripping song here by a long way. Built on a recurring refrain (”Not like some old love/You’re more like the sea/A heart’s coming home, love/And they wash you to me”), it’s only in the final 90 seconds that the song is injected with a sense of urgency through an increase in tempo and the appearance of softly-distorted guitars.
Full review at Mess+Noise, where you can also stream two tracks from this album. More Halfway on their MySpace.
Filed under Published Writing | Tags: album-review, an-outpost-of-promise, Brisbane, halfway, mess-and-noise, Music, robert-forster | Comment (0)Mess+Noise story: The Go Between Bridge Opening
A half-story, half-live review for Mess+Noise that discusses the opening of Brisbane’s newest river crossing, The Go Between Bridge.
Go Between Opening: Here Comes A City
ANDREW MCMILLEN reports on the historic opening of the Go Between Bridge on June 25, which saw artists including Robert Forster, Yves Klein Blue and The John Steel Singers pay tribute to The Go-Betweens’ legacy to Brisbane. Photos by ELLENI TOUMPAS.
There’s both beauty and irony in the fact that Brisbane residents voted to name their newest bridge after a pop band that found wider appreciation outside Australia, rather than within this city’s streets. That it’s a toll bridge, not a free crossing, is a moot point by now. Though this particular structure - which links South Brisbane to the Inner City Bypass and Riverside Expressway - won’t be open for business for a couple more weeks, today’s concert is a novel opportunity to experience the new construction alongside a soundtrack that links The Go-Betweens’ past to its present.
Surprisingly for 4pm on a Friday afternoon, a significant early crowd has gathered to enter via gates on the western side. It soon becomes apparent that the majority in attendance are teens, presumably wooed in by the triple j-friendly fare on offer today. The John Steel Singers are in full flight atop a stage that stretches across four lanes. Their colourful music provides stark contrast to the threatening clouds overhead, and there’s a strong Forster connection too (he produced their forthcoming debut album Tangalooma). This afternoon they repay the compliment by providing a buoyant take on his ‘Too Much Of One Thing’ from the 2003 Go-Betweens album Bright Yellow, Bright Orange.
Full story at Mess+Noise.
Filed under Published Writing | Tags: Brisbane, go-between-bridge, john-steel-singers, mess-and-noise, Published Writing, robert-forster, the-go-betweens | Comment (1)Mess+Noise ‘Icons’ feature: Robert Forster
My first feature for the Mess+Noise ‘Icons’ series, wherein Australian musicians of cultural significance are profiled at length. In this case, it’s a three-part story that consists of two hours in conversation with Robert Forster.
Icons: Robert Forster
In the first of a three-part interview with Robert Forster – spanning his years in The Go-Betweens, his solo career and his new life as a producer and rock critic – ANDREW MCMILLEN chats to the Brisbane icon about his early years in The Gap, the Bjelke-Peterson regime and meeting longtime collaborator Grant McLennan.
A group called The Go-Betweens emerged from Brisbane in the late 1970s. One half of its songwriting core was an arts student at the University Of Queensland named Robert Forster. With a head full of ambition, a desire for glamour and a hard-earned talent for writing pop songs, Forster would – alongside his best friend, Grant McLennan – eventually lead the band to cultivate a significant, yet disparate following across the world. While there was a decade-long gap in the band’s history during the 1990s, when both songwriters pursued solo careers, critical applause was loudest following the release of what would become The Go-Betweens’ ninth and final album, 2005’s Oceans Apart. A year later, McLennan passed away in his sleep, aged 48. Forster knew immediately that the band’s career was over.
Since The Go-Betweens’ demise, Forster has occupied himself with an ongoing solo career – 2008’sThe Evangelist, his first solo effort in 12 years, was widely noted as among his best work – and an unexpected entrance into music journalism via an invite from The Monthly. That regular album review column led to the publication of his first book The Ten Rules Of Rock And Roll (2009, Black Inc Publications), a collection of his best reviews, and some additional prose, both fiction and non-fiction.
On a rainy morning in May, I meet with Forster at a bakery nearby his home in The Gap, a suburb to the west of Brisbane. He had been briefed by his manager that I intended to discuss his career at length for this piece, and he more than played his part, proving an amicable conversationalist and answering my many questions thoughtfully and at length. Midway through our conversation, he pauses the interview and asks about the reliability of my digital voice recorder, as he’s looking to purchase one for future journalistic endeavours.
As we talk, I come to realise that – although he denies as much during our interview – Forster’s exaggerated, livewire stage manner is very near to the off-stage persona he presents. Both sides of the man are informed by a relentless undercurrent of dry humour, deeply rooted in a sense of irony. He often responds in triplets - “Yeah yeah yeah”, or “No no no” – before confirming or clarifying my research. We speak for more than 90 minutes at the bakery, before he realises he’s late for a meeting. Three days later, Forster again slips into interview mode over the telephone with the ease of a man who has spent the majority of his adult life in the public eye.
Full interview at Mess+Noise in three parts: part one here, part two here, part three here.
Researching, conducting and editing this interview is the highlight of my journalistic career thus far, as I alluded to in my interview with Plus One. Speaking with Robert was a true pleasure.
[Further reading: Forster in conversation with John Willsteed at Brisbane bookstore Avid Reader in November 2009.]
Filed under Published Writing | Tags: feature-writing, icons, Interview, Journalism, mess-and-noise, Published Writing, robert-forster, the-go-betweens, University | Comment (1)The Vine review: Porcupine Tree @ The Tivoli, February 2010
Here’s my first review for The Vine, a Fairfax Media-owned youth culture site. It’s of British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree [pictured right] playing The Tivoli on February 5, 2010. You can read it here.
I want to discuss this review from a writing perspective. Some background is required.
If you’ve followed my writing over the years, you might have noticed that this review is a return to the long-form, descriptive style that I became known for when writing for FasterLouder.com.au.
To illustrate: compare my Bloc Party @ Riverstage, November 2008 review for FL to this Robert Forster @ QLD Art Gallery, September 2009 review for Mess+Noise.
With the former, I fell into a style that prized observing facts over engaging with the subject matter on an emotional level. To me, the Forster review reads like it’s written from a calm place more conducive to expressing one’s feelings, than simply listing songs played and key musical moments.
To illustrate, it’s less this:
It seems that foul weather has sidestepped Brisbane’s sore and sorry suburbs this weekend: clear skies greet Bloc Party’s arrival onstage, and an overwhelming sense of unity sweeps across the capacity crowd. [...] Following the guitar freak-out during Positive Tension’s bridge (“so fucking useless!”), Okereke’s closing words tease the crowd: “play it cool”. The searing guitar tone of that track and Helicopter number among the likes of Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out as the most memorable rock sounds to emerge from the United Kingdom this decade. (Bloc Party @ Riverstage, November 2008)
Than this:
For seven songs, Robert Forster is alone, armed only with six-string, voice, wit and stare. [...] There’s no hint of melancholy in Forster’s delivery, nor sense of mourning among the crowd; [songwriting partner Grant McLennan's death] happened three years ago, after all. I feel obscene for writing these words, like I’m prodding at Forster’s bruised heart for mentioning McLennan in this context. But more than the half-dozen times I’ve seen the man perform in the last few years, this stage configuration highlights the emotional distance between us and he. (Robert Forster @ QLD Art Gallery, September 2009)
I mentioned earlier that I ‘fell into’ the descriptive style when writing for FasterLouder and street press because it’s the norm. It’s easy. It’s what the majority of street press writers do, and when I stepped into music writing, I paid a lot of attention to my peers within the local community. (I still do read street press, but now I find it most useful when viewed as a resource that highlights what not to do as a music writer.) [Clarification: I'm referring specifically to street press live reviews in this instance.]
I feel that this style of writing is problematic purely because it is so safe. You can’t be wrong when you’re just listing songs played and key musical moments. I’m not saying that anyone can do that. More accurately, anyone familiar enough with a band and able to write coherently can do that.
And if you can do that, if you want to call yourself a music writer or a music journalist - I alternate the two terms loosely, which may be problematic in itself - then that’s fine. You can get your name crossed off the list at the door and watch the band and write down the setlist in your notepad (or crib it from online forums) and write your little description and send it to your editor (who won’t fuck with your copy because it’s so inoffensive and beige) and get published and show your friends and perpetuate the delusion that you’re a worthwhile music writer just because you get published.
If you’re reading this and getting pissed off, hey - I’ve been there. I was that person for nearly two years until I took this role seriously. (You can read more about that here - but I warn you, it’s reasonably incoherent.) Between July 2007 and May 2009, music ‘journalism’, to me, was putting my hand up to review shows that, 90% of the time, I knew I’d like. I’d show up with a friend and get my free tickets and have some drinks and maybe take some notes and if it was a weekend show, I’d write it up late on Sunday night to meet the Monday morning deadline. (I now write most reviews immediately afterwards.)
If you view it in terms of free entertainment, as I did, there’s no problem. You might even embrace your mediocrity as a writer because hey, it’s a hobby, right? You can impress your friends by getting your named crossed off the guestlist. Seeing bands for free and getting paid (miserably) for it - the dream, right? High fives!
After nearly two years, though, I could embrace my mediocrity no longer. You realise that publicists are quoting your published praise not because it’s good writing, but because your praise is so unashamedly hyperbolic that of course it’ll appear on the press release. Because at the time, as a ‘music writer’, I wasn’t sufficiently self-aware to realise that I was being so fucking immature.
This is not to say that a good writer can’t praise a band. I still nominate to review shows by bands whose music I’m familiar with, and usually fond of. I’m not sure how to define it, but I think that an important self-realisation has to take place before a music writer can put aside the urge to praise and describe, and instead rely on gut instincts and feelings to shape their work. Still the best advice I’ve received is from Andrew Ramadge, who I think of whenever I write about music. The most important question I have to answer: what does it feel like?
Returning to the Porcupine Tree review. It took me three or four hours to write, which is far longer than I’ve spent on any live review for Mess+Noise. In a way it feels like I’ve regressed, purely because of its length and my tendency to rely upon description instead of feel. As I’ve made clear, description without emotional engagement is for losers. There was some exposition about the potential hypocrisy of an internet-successful band disallowing the use of recording equipment, but as my first review for The Vine, I don’t feel that it’s particularly strong, or representative of my evolution as a writer.
Why did I submit it if I wasn’t 100% happy with the outcome? I believe it’s because I was thrown by the show, and didn’t know how to write it any other way. I hadn’t seen a serious rock ‘production’ like that in some time, and while I was clearly impressed by the scope of their performance, I perhaps allowed myself to take the easy way out. I allowed my standards as a writer to drop, and I think it shows.
Maybe I’m being over-cautious. Maybe I spent too long absorbed in a piece of writing that I can no longer tell whether it’s good or bad. (That happens sometimes.) What do you think? If you’ve read this far, I’d love your critical appraisal of my review, whether you’re familiar with Porcupine Tree or not.
Filed under Published Writing, Writing | Tags: andrew-ramadge, bloc-party, criticism, FasterLouder, Journalism, Mediocrity, Music, music-criticism, porcupine-tree, Published Writing, robert-forster, Street Press, the-vine, Writing | Comments (3)