Robert Forster‘s new album, „The Candle and The Flame“, took shape in quite strange ways, lingering around a dark time for his family, and it ended up in a collection of heartbreakers, power pieces, singalongs (nearly), lifers, growers, invocations, „deep sinkers“, „straight rollers“, and road meditations.
The most exciting thing for me (as someone who followed the Go-Betweens and their „in-between“ solo albums from the first longplayer onwards) is how easily Robert seems to wander and stroll through different periods of his life, from teenage angst and dreams, over the sophisticated folk pop of the salad days (all the spaces between rural hinterland, his romantic days in Regensburg, to 16, Lovers Lane), towards the ways of looking back, with a sharp eye and a decent quantum of sepia tinged sincerity.
There‘s a cinematic feeling all over the place on this beautiful album. It‘s hard to not stop in the tracks at certain moments that, a gift of these pieces, come back to you again and again, enchanting as they are!