Robert Forster
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Robert Forster

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“I’d done The Evangelist in 2008, and I knew that that album marked the end of an era, and that whatever I did next would be a new step,” says Forster. “I thought the best way to mark that would be the passage of time. So it was planned to be five years, but it pushed out to seven.”

Forster wrote The Evangelist in the wake of McLennan’s death, with the sombre tone of many of the songs reflecting his state of mind. “That 18 months [after McLennan’s death] was quite intense,” Forster says. “I was in a very different place. I was dealing with a lot of grief obviously – fog is the wrong word, but a different state of mind. I was attached to these feelings, and I was attached to these particular songs. And they all spilled out on that album.”

After recording The Evangelist, Forster had a strong sense of where he wanted his next album to go, and how he wanted to record it. “I wanted to work with a different producer, I didn’t want to record in England, I wanted to record in analogue not Pro Tools, I wanted to work with new musicians,” he says. The change in personnel and production style, Forster felt, would help him create songs “that maybe flew off the guitar a little bit better – that there would be a bit more upbeat material”.

In 2011, Forster assembled his supporting cast: Scott Bromiley and Luke McDonald of the John Steel Singers (whose 2010 album Tangalooma was produced by Forster), drummer Matt Piele from Forster’s touring band and Forster’s wife Karen Baumler on violin and vocals. 

“They all contributed enormously – I really gave the album over to people,” he says. “Scott and Luke especially – they’re master instrumentalists and have a great feeling for instrumentation and production ideas. When we started practising back in 2011, I had ten demos that I’d written and I just said ‘Take them wherever you want, don’t just plonk all along a bass or guitar,’ which I knew they wouldn’t do anyway.” 

With his time split between writing, performing and finalising the release of the first instalment of The Go-Betweens’ boxset, it took another four years before Forster reconvened with his ensemble to record Songs to Play. True to the original vision, Songs to Play is an album of upbeat tracks and whimsical lyrical exploration. The opening track, Learn to Burn, has shades of Talking Heads, Modern Lovers and Roxy Music (“I didn’t plan it that way, but I love all of those artists”), while on Let Me Imagine You, I’m So Happy for You and Love is Where It Is, Forster is the romantic poet, casting a rose-coloured glance at the world and people around him.

“Personally, I guess I am [a romantic] – I’m 58 years old and I’m a practising songwriter. I have to be romantic – there’s no other way for me to exist. It is a very romantic profession once you get to my age, and that’s what I’ve done.”

As a variation on a theme, Forster uses I Love Myself (and I Always Have) to explore his own sense of self-worth, and to play with audience perceptions of the song’s meaning. 

“The first two lines of the song are the song title, but then it changes, and you realise it’s not going to go off with a lot of silly one liners, but goes off into different territory that relates to the title.”

BY PATRICK EMERY