Robert Forster's Long Goodbye
A Go-Between re-emerges with maybe the best song his dearly departed bandmate ever wrote

The first go-round for Australia's Go-Betweens lasted six albums and nearly a dozen years- call it the '80s with a running start. And though band founders Robert Forster and Grant McLennan professed harder-edged influences like the Saints and the Velvet Underground, their resulting partnered sound emanated with a harmonious polish, like a more optimistic version of the Cure or the Smiths. Soon enough, Forster and McLennan - like Squeeze's Difford and Tilbrook - were inextricably and positively compared to Lennon and McCartney, but the expected correlative commercial success proved elusive. So following the soft landing of 1988's 16 Lovers Lane, the consensus pick for best Go-Betweens album and the group's last, best chance for ecto-Australian stardom, Forster and McLennan parted professional ways. The duo stayed friends, at times even touring together as each launched a career alone. Forster recorded four solo albums, and McLennan recorded four solo albums. The pair, it seemed, was always in lockstep.

But while critical notice kept pace with their individual ventures, the decade-long dalliances drew to a close. In the year 2000, Forster and McLennan reclaimed the Go-Betweens name and, backed by Sleater-Kinney, recorded Friends of Rachel Worth, the first of three albums of original material for the new century.

At the end of this month, Forster will release The Evangelist, his fifth solo album and his first since the Go-Betweens reunited. But the partnership, the lockstep, has been broken. On May 6, 2006, while napping prior to a party, Grant McLennan suffered a massive heart attack, cutting short a brief life and long collaboration.

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