When everything changed

 By Henry Lipput

Robert Forster had three years’ worth of songs  for a new album before his wife and musical partner Karin Baumler was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

And then everything changed.

While Baumler underwent chemotherapy, Forster set out to quickly record songs at the Alchemix studio in Brisbane where they had lived for a number of years. Their son Louis joined the music sessions as did Adele Pickvance, a long-time friend, bass player on the last three Go-Betweens albums and Forster’s great The Evangelist album, and currently the Adele of Adele and the Chandeliers.

Not knowing how much time they had (when her health allowed, Baumler contributed violin and backing vocals to the songs as she had for Forster’s two previous albums), the goal was to create a recording they would always have of the experience whether it became an album worth releasing or not. But after listening to two of the completed songs, which were made without headphones and overdubs and with everyone in the studio together playing eye-to-eye, they wondered whether an entire album could be produced the same way. The result is the literate and heartfelt The Candle and the Flame (Tapete Records).

Forster wrote “She’s A Fighter” after Baumler’s diagnosis and as she rested from treatment he come up with a basic riff. The sound owes more than a little to skiffle (but with electric guitar and xylophone) and the simple, repeated lyrics of support (“She’s a fighter/Fighting for good”) became a mantra, a way of building up both their spirits.

A few of the songs on The Candle and the Flame deal with the passage of time. In “I Don’t Do Drugs I Do Time” Forster triggers a time loop of memories of both before and after he met Baumler. She provides lovely backing vocals as Forster plays an acoustic guitar. “I remember when we first met/Where you sat/What you said/What was running/Through my head” circles back to earlier times: “I’m walking to school in ‘69/The next day I’m 35.”

“Always” sounds like an early Go-Betweens track with its Tom Verlaine-inspired guitar. Although Forster sings “time moves in one direction” he continues with what I hear as a metaphor about how the brain processes memories: “And there’s a breakdown at the intersection of Highway 5/There’s going to have to be a detour” and your thoughts head off in another direction.

 “When I Was a Young Man” is a story song in which Forster writes about his early musical efforts and his major influences. “Elder brothers/I had a few/One was named David/The other was Lou” he sings, half name-checking Bowie and Reed. As time went other influences were felt: “Elder brothers/They came along/There was a new David/And there was Tom/They bewitched me in wardrobe and song” with this time referring to Johansen and Verlaine.

With “Tender Years” Forster conflates both time and storytelling. He says “She’s a book/A thousand pages” before letting us know “Images of her are vivid/Her body has not withered/From her entrance in Chapter One.” “I’m in a story with her” he sings “I know I can’t life without her/I can’t imagine one.”

They’ve been together for 32 years and their third meeting (the third time’s the charm, right?) during the German leg of the R.E.M/Go-Betweens European tour is referenced: “Time is important/Timing is more important/Without it a story can end/Heidelberg is a German city/By the river very pretty/I was there/The timing was our friend.” “Tender Years” has a groove to the arrangement and there’s also a wonderful “Losing My Religion”-like mandolin along with one of the few band workouts on the album.