Pitchfork

"I miss Grant McLennan" read the t-shirt worn by Stars singer Torquil Campbell at last summer's Lollapalooza. Surely those sentiments summed up the thoughts of at least a few others in the crowd. A few, but not many. Sadly, for most of their existence and certainly throughout their long 1990s hiatus, the Go-Betweens stayed one of the music world's best-kept secrets, unimpeachably good but somehow unable to convince the masses of their strengths.

While the mainstream more or less ignored the group throughout its tenure, the critics raved. When the Australian band's back catalog was first remastered and reissued, each disc came wrapped in a second sleeve covered with breathless contemporaneous accolades, the kiss of death if ever there was one. After all, no one likes being told what's good for them, so whether writ tiny on the CD cover or plastered on billboards, it was probably just not to be.

At the same time, the Go-Betweens weren't quite a cult act, either. The songs of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan were too classy for that, too smart, and their audience modest, even by cult standards. The band's albums were more like great little novels, with Forster and McLennan their tandem authors, talked about and taught to a self-selecting student pool but far from beach reads. Not surprisingly, when the group reunited after a long hiatus, only a handful of people showed up to a 1999 acoustic duo gig in Chicago, a pitiful turnout for a band of their stature but a true pleasure for the few that turned up.

Admittedly, once the new albums started coming again, that audience grew, but it was a matter of building up lost momentum as well as making up for lost time. Not that the years between Go-Betweens' group activity were in any way truly lost. During the gap, Forster and McLennan embarked on parallel solo careers, with mostly fruitful results. Speaking to McLennan shortly before his death, I told him that I actually liked a couple of his solo albums better than a couple of the much-vaunted Go-Betweens albums. Famously modest but equally honest, McLennan responded, "I do, too."

Of course, it's McLennan's untimely 2006 passing that's prompted this retrospective of his and Forster's respective solo outputs. No doubt were McLennan still alive, the two would be working on a follow-up to the great swan song Oceans Apart, but Forster was quick to recognize the obvious: Without his musical partner of so many decades, the Go-Betweens were done for good. So here we are, not exactly looking back at a band but at its two principals, and in particular one songwriter who has left us with nothing to look forward to.

If the Go-Betweens slipped under the radar, McLennan's solo career was essentially off the map. But as the Go-Betweens' poppier, more conventional (but no less poetic) songwriter, his solo output does deserve to be held in equal esteem with his best Go-Betweens work. Arranged chronologically, McLennan's half of The Best of the Solo Recordings: 1990-1997 features song after song of heartbreak, hooks, and, for the uninitiated, revelations.

"Black Mule", from Watershed, would have worked on the Go-Betweens' hushed 16 Lovers Lane, while the absolutely gorgeous "The Dark Side of Town", the bittersweet pop gem "Lighting Fires", and the anthemic "Surround Me" (all from Fireboy) must have driven McLennan nuts, knowing that songs as good as those he was cranking out were for the most part destined for the void.

In fact, McLennan's 1994 Horsebreaker Star found him recording in America in hopes of finally finding a bigger and more appreciative audience, but as usual the plan failed to work out. Ever prolific, he still came up with a double disc of material, most of it ace (the haunting title track is one of the few to make it to this double disc set). Songs like "One Plus One", from McLennan's final solo album In Your Bright Ray, again would have been perfect on some lost Go-Betweens disc, showing how remarkably consistent McLennan remained as a solo act.

Robert Forster was easily the more quirky writer in the Go-Betweens, and his solo career reflects that. His half of Solo Recordings, arranged to his liking, features Forster in all his speak-sing glory, making up in charm, modest melody and a curious turn of phrase what he sometimes lacked in outright pop instincts. "She reminded me of Africa, though I've never been" (from "I Can Do") is the kind of typically enigmatic line Forster regularly gets off over the course of the collection, sung with just a hint of a wink.

But Forster was no pop slouch, either, and once again just about every one of his tracks included on this comp could have probably worked as-is on a Go-Betweens album, particularly the more melancholy "I've Been Looking for Somebody" and "I'll Jump" (though maybe not the Nick Cave-esque melodrama of "Cryin' Love" or "Danger in the Past"). Missing is any material from Forster's more or less disowned covers record I Had a New York Girlfriend, which at least revealed the breadth of the guy's interests with covers from every corner, the expected (Bob Dylan) and the unexpected (Grant Hart) alike.

As of late, Forster's been focusing on prose-- music criticism, ironically-- though it really doesn't take an expert or critic to recognize that neither he nor McLennan, collectively or individually, ever stood much of a chance on the charts. That's why they made such great fits for one another in the Go-Betweens. Up to the end, the band made music that demanded to be heard by being as good as it could possibly be, simple as that. That people didn't listen says less about the music than it does about the people not listening. This collection reminds how, despite it all, both writers followed a similarly straight, dedicated and principled path as solo artists, making music very much of a piece with their work in the Go-Betweens while displaying the distinct but compatible differences in that made their collective work so special.