release date: Sep. 1996
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,32]
producer: Edwyn Collins
label: Beggars Banquet - nationality: Australia
Track highlights: 1. "I Can Do" - 3. "Cryin' Love" - 5. "Loneliness" - 6. "Jug of Wine" - 8. "Rock 'n' Roll Friend" - 10. "I'll Jump"
4th studio album by Robert Forster is the follow-up to the covers album I Had a New York Girlfriend (Oct. 1994) is produced by Scottish artist Edwyn Collins, whom Forster had admired a great deal back when The Go-Betweens and Collins' band Orange Juice were both making music for the small record company Postcard. Orange Juice broke through to radio stations and to the pinnacles of fame, while The Go-Betweens were still a smaller act doing their best. Warm Nights is Forster's final album on Beggars Banquet, who subsequently didn't extend his contract.
All tracks here are written and composed by Forster except track #8, which is an older song co-written with Grant McLennan, originally selected from the band's '88 album 16 Lovers Lane, but the song was released as B-side to the second single Was There Anything I Could Do? (Oct. '88) from the album. On the album here, the song has been recreated in a bolder Dylanesque style with a (quite) distinctive Hammond organ as dominating trait.
Forster had long suffered from writer's block, which had resulted in the '94 covers album but after the decision to return to Brisbane, he had quickly written a series of new songs, and together with bassist Adele Pickvance and drummer Glenn Thompson, who both appeared on Forster's Calling From a Country Phone (Oct. 1993), Forster gathered a live band, which he named 'Robert Forster and Warm Nights'. Later on, Pickvance was to become a permanent member of the reformed The Go-Betweens, but the album here was recorded with producer Edwyn Collins on guitar, Clare Kenny on bass, Sean Read on keyboards, and with Dave Ruffy on drums. It's very much looking down memory lane on Warm Nights, which sounds somewhat like the attempt to recreate some of Forster's formative years with The Go-Betweens. Again, he returns to his inspiration found in Verlaine, Dylan, and Leonard Cohen - both lyrically as well as in the arrangements, but you'll also find pop / rock à la The Go-Betweens rather than the country style that characterised the '93 album. In addition to a simplicity in Collins' production, some Nick Cave darkness has also crept in - on "Cryin' Love" it gives new life to Forster's musical repertoire, which in a way isn't exactly characterised by embracing widely.
Warm Nights is in many ways an attempt to appear as a fresh restart of Forster's discography with musical threads to the time with his former band. Sometimes it works out fine - at other times there's a lot of recycling and a little too many ties to other artists. The album was to be Forster's last solo album for more than 12 years, partly because he and Grant McLennan found back together and reformed The Go-Betweens before this album was released. Together, they then added another three more albums to the band's discography before it was abruptly terminated by the sudden death of McLennan in May 2006, which once again meant that Forster needed some time to find his feet again and subsequently restarted his solo career with The Evangelist in 2008.
If you are a big admirer of Dylan and Verlaine, Warm Nights will probably make a wonderful acquaintance.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, Q Magazine 3 / 5 stars ]
