The Go-Betweens

Robert Forster and Grant McLennan were known for their songwriting, which was marked by smart lyrics and tuneful choruses, and the band they founded in 1977 added jangly guitars and purposeful rhythms to the mix. Forster and McLennan formed The Go-Betweens after meeting at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, and they released their first single, “Lee Remick,” a month after playing their first show. Send Me a Lullaby, the band’s debut LP, came out in 1981, garnering notice from the local press for McLellan and Forster’s blend of naïve sentiments and crisp song structures. The Go-Betweens further refined their chiming yet propulsive sound, earning a cult following that exploded in 1988 when they released 16 Lovers Lane, which hit big in the US on the then-surging modern-rock format with the dejected yet upbeat “Streets of Your Town” and the biting “Was There Anything I Could Do?” McLennan and Forster disbanded The Go-Betweens in 1989; they performed a reunion show in 1996 and then returned full-time to making music in 2000. The band released three more albums, including 2000’s Sleater-Kinney-assisted The Friends of Rachel Worth and 2005’s adventurous Oceans Apart, before McLennan’s death in May 2006. Forster has continued on as a solo artist, and in 2016 he published Grant & I, a memoir focused on The Go-Betweens’ central partnership.