Robert Forster @ The Toff,Melbourne (10/8/08)

Sun 17th Aug, 2008 in Gig Reviews

Tonight’s gig was somewhat of an emotional one because it was Robert’s first series of concerts since the death of his long time musical collaborator Grant McLennan. Grant passed away about three years ago and Robert has been pretty quite since, which is understandable considering they had played together for the good part of twenty-five years.

The Toff was the perfect venue for Robert’s intimate set, it has a beautiful ambience and a great sound, the venue was packed as were the two night’s previous, he played two forty-five minute set’s which consisted of a lot of his solo recording’s from his new album The Evangelist, it must have been quite a cathartic experience putting this album together because about half of the songs were written by Grant and Robert finished them off as he knew fit.

There has always between a distinct difference between Robert’s and Grant’s songs, Grant’s song had these beautiful emotive impact with lush orchestrations’ as opposed to Robert’s songs had that quirky more poppy edge to them, not to say that Robert’s songs didn’t have the an emotional impact to them.

Both his set’s had a number of Go Between’s hit’s, more from the later period of the band than the classic 80s period, older song’s like Head Full Of Steam, had the crowd in awe, and Spring Rain would have brought back a lot of fond memories for the audience. The song Darlinghurst Night’s was fantastic, one of the best song’s from Ocean’s Apart, the Go Between’s swan song from a couple of years ago.

Robert is a great raconteur, he told this story of how he went to see Patti Smith about 10 years ago at a small private gig in London, and the great length’s he went to just to just to get in the door, his wry sense of humour added the perfect touch to the gig. He then proceeded to play a song he wrote about that experience called She Talk’s to Angel’s, where he rhymes Kurt Cobain with Tom Verlaine, a perfect example of his fine song writing.

Towards the end of the night he stripped down to his shirt and busted out some fine rock star antic’s, where he strutted his stuff for the packed house. It was a beautiful thing to see Robert pay an amazing tribute to his great friend Grant, whose presence was felt all through the set.