Search - Robert Forster, Grant Mclennan :: Intermission (Dig)

In between right at the end

Boxodreams | district of columbia | 07/18/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Planned as a way station between album projects during a year off, "Intermission" becomes a tombstone and artifact for the Go-Betweens with the death of Grant McLennan, suddenly, at age 49 at his home on a night he had gathered his dearest friends to a house party. Robert Forster, his brother in peaceful arms, was there that night too. It's hard to hear these songs from the sojourning solo years, few aimless and barren, most rich with growth and reward, without feeling the melancholy tug of death, unless, of course, you are new to the music. Then what you get is a dream, smart, well-realized, fun, at times shimmery, at times bookish guitar pop from two of the best as they found their way through daily living to the other side that was the happy reunion of the band for three more albums before Grant's end. The cover looks too much like a headstone with a name in a resting place in the ground, a monument is not for pop, even sophisticated, keepable pop such as this. Mostly, I think, it's a thing for friends, a keepsake. "Intermission" was meant as a way of discovery for all the new fans that found them with their last Go-Betweens release, "Oceans Apart." Thinking that you have new fans, and not just a lot of old ones rediscovering you, is a thought full of hope and light as you push into 50 with all your musical instincts and thought process intact, but the deeply engrossed fans the two of them long inspired will already have the original solo albums or want to seek them out. Not all of the work on those solo records is worthy of the obsession, but this just skims that very fine surface, and that desire to dive in and breathe deeply is what loving a great band is all about. apart from mourning, there is still magic in here."

Introduction to a pair of genius

Eduardo Ferrandis Pereprez | 03/25/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I got all the Go beetweens albums, and I wanted to know how where the albums of their leaders alone, so I decided to get the "Intermission" album.

I must say that all the songs are great and they are as good as those of the go beetweens.

Forster is more arty/pop and Mc Lennan was just a genius of the melodies and guitars.

Now I want to get all their albums."