release date: Jun. 1991
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,52]
producer: Dave Dobbyn
label: Beggars Banquet - nationality: Australia
Track highlights: 1. "When Word Gets Around" (video) - 2. "Haven't I Been a Fool" (live) - 3. "Haunted House" - 5. "Easy Come Easy Go" - 8. "You Can't Have Everything"
Studio album debut by Grant W. McLennan [Grant William] one of the founders of The Go-Betweens released 18 months after the disbandment Christmas 1989 and originally released on White (Label) Records in Australia, sub-label to Mushroom, and on Beggars Banquet for international issues. More recently, the album follows only 6 months after the debut album by the duo-project Jack Frost consisting of McLennan and Steve Kilbey.
Despite being one of the main composers, guitarists and vocalist, this is stylistically far from the last album 16 Lovers Lane (Aug. 1988) by his former band, and it's also further away than his co-founder, Robert Forster's solo debut released some 7 months earlier - the fine Danger in the Past (1990). It's of course unjust to compare these two solo albums, as the two are both 100% in charge of what they want their respective albums to sound like, and McLennan has chosen to release an album in a naked singer / songwriter and folk pop style that sits somewhere between Bob Dylan, Townes van Zandt and early Paul Simon and completely free of the Kilbey-induced neo-psychedelia of the Jack Frost project. All 12 songs here are written and composed by McLennan, who is credited on vocals and guitar with the support of a bunch of session musicians, which include producer Dave Dobbyn as well as Amanda Brown - McLennan's ex-band mate and ex-girlfriend, who is at the centre of the majority of the songs here.
A few up-tempo tracks with strumming jangle pop guitars remind us of the existence of a band called The Go-Betweens but the majority of the tracks do not. It's not contemporary indie pop and the rock label is only there, I think, 'cause that's what people relate to when thinking of music by one of the backbones of the former Australian indie rock-band.
The album was perhaps met by a few positive reviews but it came out with basically no one paying much attention, and my perceptions of the album is a bit far from the overwhelming reception you'll read on allmusic.com, which is the only one I could find. That said, Watershed reveals McLennan's forces as well as his weaknesses. He has been accustomed to writing the ligthweight counterparts to Forster's darker contributions, and as strong and nicely his heartbroken lyrics may appear, they simply shine brighter with a polarity. Here, he attempts with both slow and uptempo songs but his former band mates also helped in selecting his strongest songs and arranging. And now left to do the whole thing on his own, the dynamics are less apparent. When McLennan shines, he's among the finest and most fascinating songwriters around, but the album comes with too much fill.
Not bad and not really great, but definitely worth a spin and more.
[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5 stars ]
