If Australian rock music had a family tree, singer songwriter Robert Forster would fit in somewhere as the wise old uncle. He’s a rock god of the old guard, his role as former lead singer of The Go-Betweens garnering him that position, his current tenure as The Monthly’s ultimate music critic merely confirming it.
His articles have seen him shed light on some of the most moving music of the last few years, his way with words winning him The Pascall Prize for Critical Writing and a book deal. It’s no surprise really: he’s been crafting good songs for decades now. Should we be surprised that he likes… nay, loves… pop music?
‘I love good pop music, yeah. I always will,’ Forster said on the phone from his suburban home in Brisbane, crows in the background audibly cawing their approval at his comments. ‘Although it mightn’t come through all the time in my music, I like pop music.
‘Why? Because it’s beautiful and shiny and funny and moving. It’s craft, and it can have real meaning and it can come out of a radio and make you feel happy or sad or it can move you. All those things.’
Forster speaks with a languid meticulousness, as though nothing fazes him but every word is economical and exact. It’s a similar intense nonchalance which pervades his music. Yet when it comes to his writing, this energy becomes unbelievably focused, precise like a scrutinizing laser beam.
‘I’m not surprised that I have ideas,’ Forster said of his writing process, both sonically and on the page. ‘I guess I’m just surprised sometimes that I can finish them. That I can finish a song or I can finish an article I’ve got to write or finish a story. That can sometimes be surprising because you have to get stuck somewhere.
‘There’s some things that I tend to bang on about more than others. There’s a certain angle that I’ve got, because I’ve made albums and written songs and been in studios and toured that perhaps helps me write what I write, and maybe what I write has a different quality that is fresh.’
It’s a quality which pervades his rock tome The Ten Rules of Rock & Roll, one of the reasons he’s coming to Perth: and hence his appearance at PIAF’S Perth Writers Festival. But he’s also appearing at Beck’s Music Box, playing songs from his last record, The Evangelist. It’s a record he wrote in memory of the passing of his friend and band member Grant McLennan.
‘It was an album made for a particular moment, because it was made about a year and a half after Grant McLennan, who was a partner of mine, died. He passed away at the age of 48 and so we were Go-Betweens at the time and writing songs for the new album. So the shadow of that is very much on the record; although not all the songs allude to that past. There’s some of his songs on the record. There’s a sense of melancholy on the record, but it’s not too intense. It’s a record I really like.’
Rob Forster appears at Beck’s Music Box on Wednesday February 24. For further info about the festival’s lineup and to purchase tickets visit www.perthfestival.com.au.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
