I'd come back from the usual months of living free between first and second year Uni to two records that caught me. One was the Hunters and Collectors EP and the other was this, The Go-Betweens' first full record. There was a hefty build up for an indy band. Interviews on 4ZZZ and in the local press. They were high enough profile for RAM or Juke but for little more than five hundred words at the most. Not yet two page interviews.
And there was that title. One friend hated it as it sounded soft and mushy but I thought that was the point. Mass market labels like K-Tel would regularly bring out discs with titles like this, brimming with thin masters of oldies gathered in a theme. The Reels would release a whole album of soft core covers very deliberately on K-Tel this same year and it outsold their stone cold classic Quasimodo's Dream to an embarrassing degree. I remember hearing the ZZZ interview where The Go-Betweens said they had wanted an Australian sound to it (might have been when the "striped sunlight" phrase emerged) and they wanted a K-Tel-like title. No one was gabbing on about irony or juxtaposition but things were changing rapidly from the outright one-to-one correspondance of punk to the contrary motion of the early '80s. So, Send me a Lullaby it was.
And, yes, at first listening it was spiky, contrary and hard to love. But what did I or any of us expect. The GoBs were royalty by default. By default as, in the marked absence of The Saints there was no one left among the many bands gigging or trying to gig who could or wanted to lead anything. The Go-Betweens were the sole outfit that had consistently released real records on actual vinyl. They'd even recorded overseas with cool people like Orange Juice. But the timeline of style didn't seem to make much sense: boppy Lee Remick, rich pop of People Say, sparser than a baby's moustache I Need Two Heads, richer sparser on Your Turn My Turn. The gigs sounded the same as ever, a three piece at an acoustically unfriendly venue. No one had any idea of what the first album would be like. So, it was a surprise. What do you call a birthday present that's useful for something you're not into yet?
The release day came up and the interview for it was the sound of Robert and Grant (don't remember Lindy getting much of a word in though her contribution is essential) and then the sound of the spiky, petulant non-rock tracks from the record. The one thing they could claim is that they were working on their own terms at a time when that mattered more than sounding like the big parade. You could, if you were shallow, seek similarities in this record and those of other artists from the time and before but, really, any of them will be a stretch or so superficial you might as well say, "well both use chords". Really, the importance of this record to the band but also to a city quietly proud of them was that it was done without dressing up like the zeitgeist. It meant that they were more likely to influence than repeat influences and influence they did. And they did it in Melbourne, culturally as far away from Brisbane as could be got, with the Birthday Party's producer and James Freud on sax. And they didn't sound like anyone associated with those figures nor even anyone from Melbourne. They just sounded like themselves.
But we don't start spiky. One Thing Can Hold Us emerges from the black of the vinyl with a gentle wafting two chord figure. A languid vocal from Grant McLennan until the more sprightly full band sections where he's singing an octave higher. The drums come in rudely and stay that way until the return to the lazy current of the verse. Ghostly guitar figures come and go. Reverb here but not there. A couple or an individual and a quality are at odds but they are of one piece. Despite the moments of near-miss intensity, this is a spooky opening.
People Know begins with a blast of squeaky sax that could have been on a Laughing Clowns track. It's jazz but not smokey cocktail, 3 a.m. jazz, but blaring impish and discordant jazz. And then it's a guitar trio playing a rock song ... of sorts. Robert Forster's introduction to the mic on the album is cool urgency. Meetings and places and age on faces in a town without trains. A busy shuffling rhythm with guitars so clean and well interlinked that they seem like a single guitar track. Images. We get enough to complete our own picture and no more.
Midnight to Neon sounds like a typical basic guitar song from the time but Forster sounds paranoid and the drumming is at odds with the rest of the band. Still can't work out why it works. Careless stars with a bright chord fanfare and a relaxed vocal. An appealing guitar break goes from a lyrical figure to an odd funk workout and ends in a sparse verse which itself gives way to a fractured arrangement. "Clumsy me and you broke something and we don't know what to do."
All About Strength is all about strength and has the same kind of stop/start approach to the magnificent Stop Before You Say It (b-side of I Need Two Heads) but ends on the kind of chanted vocal repeat that almost brings the song into conventionality but then a staggered detail brings it to an abrupt end. Ride is another where a normal sounding song gets some spiky dissonance released into its channels, going from smooth and cruisy to open and soaring to strident and funky. Reverb and distance go on a fairground ride. "Dragged down on a reef. Your inner self shall leave you for someone else." This is not a pub singalong, it's busy and flitting, and it is intriguing.
Grant McLennan's Hold Your Horses rises brightly with jangling guitar breaks that are supported or follow quirky drumming. Same writer and singer's It Could Be Anyone finishes the original record. Grant's accusing description of a heavily vulnerable figure whose irresolution makes him both easily shattered and impossible to break. It develops from a chinging chord progression and earnest vocal to a much broadened guitar field and, finally, because that's a little too nice, a chant with a chicken squawk guitar figure beneath it.
And just where have we all been after this? A bratty and difficult set of recordings that now lull now slap in the face, none of them quite settling on either effect. Even the track listing gets in on it. The recently established mini album form had just consolidated as a six song 12 inch 45rpm showcase that would never outstay its welcome. This record is 33 1/3 and is only eight songs long but most of them are only about two mintues each which keeps the overall running time well short of the usual forty-five minutes.
And the soundscape of constant change, reverb that shows up and gets turned off as suddenly, all guitars recorded clean; and the drums often panned so extremely they lose their rhythmic function. Is this the most contrarian record since Public Image Ltd's debut? No, it's more contrarian. Nothing in the many textures that a rock trio can achieve is allowed to settle for longer than it takes to register them. They are playing within their means but there is no suggestion that they'd play any other way. Apart from admitting defeat and declaring that this record just sounds like The Go-Betweens there is one thing ensuring integrity, here: the songs.
As I said earlier, this band and this record had an influence. No, there wasn't a sudden outbreak of sparsely arranged songs with complex rhythmic schemes but, for a while there, because the GoBs were from our neighbourhoods and were conquering real records, the bands that were playing really seemed to take this in and step back on the guitar solos and crunch. This didn't last because it never does. Give it a minute and some kid who thinks he's a teacher will come along with a four on the floor and a powerchord and watch as everyone just gets back in line. But for a moment, there ...
Forster and McLennan have kept their statements abstract but also brief, a paring of approaches that allows more than a second look. There are crises of trust and identity, cinematic scenes from contemporary rural Australia that veer between Westerns and horror movies and all set in a restless bed. The sleeplessness of Brisbane nights to a creative mind sounds like this. That's why it takes a few listens; you need to relax and stop thinking too literally about what you should be hearing and listen to what you are hearing. Until you do that you can't get this record, it will just sound like a mess. It just takes a good committed few encounters, just like those people you get to know just enough to want to know more but never meet again. Well, you can here.
Listening notes: Be aware that different releases of this album have different track listings. The most likely version you'll find available on CD adds four tracks including the single Your Turn My Turn. For this article I rearranged the order to match the original for accuracy but the expanded album is listenable to the same effect. My copy was part of the six album set released as a box of micro-LP discs with reduced original cover art. If you find this set the audio quality is very good and this first one is the only album with a different track order than the original (if that's wrong I'll edit this).
I'd recommend listening a few times to the original track listing. If you have it on CD you can program it (but who does?) or similarly, rearrange the songs, putting the extras last and stop at It Could Be Anyone.
The Missing Link LP had the following track listing:
1 One Thng Can Hold Us
2 People Know
3 Midnight to Neon
4 Careless
5 All About Strength
6 Ride
7 Hold Your Horses
8 It Could Be Anyone
