Danger in the Past [debut]format: cd (BEGA 113 CD)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,68]
producer: Mick Harvey
label: Beggars Banquet - nationality: Australia
Track highlights: 1. "Baby Stones" - 2. "The River People" - 3. "Leave Here Satisfied" - 4. "Heart Out to Tender" (live) - 7. "Danger in the Past" - 8. "I've Been Looking for Somebody" (4,5 / 5) - 9. "Justice"
Solo studio album by Australian songwriter Robert Forster after the disbandment of The Go-Betweens. The album is produced by Mick Harvey of The Bad Seeds, and Forster simply continues the contractual obligations with the record label who stood behind releases with his former band.
Harvey is also credited as multi-instrumentalist together with Hugo Race (former The Bad Seeds guitarist) and drummer Thomas Wydler from The Bad Seeds. Apart from these four only Karin Bäumler is credited for additional vocals.
The story goes that before breaking up with The Go-Betweens and after ending their one-year world tour, Forster had relocated to Berlin to be with Karin Bäumler - his future wife (May 1990-) - before returning to Brisbane to initiate what should have been the band's follow up to 16 Lovers Lane (1988) and immediately upon the decision to end the band (Dec. '89), he then returned to Berlin and initially began writing new songs for a duo-project - or perhaps a continuation of The Go-Betweens - as a duo with Grant McLennan, but instead the songs solidified as Forster's solo album debut. Berlin was a second home to The Bad Seeds, so it was natural to contact Harvey and then the inclusion of two other Bad Seeds members was at hand, you may say.
Although, all songs are credited Forster alone, the album as a whole have many similarities with the works by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Only tracks #1, #2 and #9 with a bolder / more typical 'jangle pop' / 'folk rock' guitars actually sound like songs that you could find on albums by The Go-Betweens, but the remaining six of the album's nine songs all share some of the same influences from 'blues rock' as albums by The Seeds by having that dark tone and wry sentiment to it. At the same time the album is also a 'singer / songwriter' release but it's quite easy to imagine Nick Cave substituting Forster's vocal and then you'd simply have a late 90s album by Cave, who at this point made more 'punk rock' / 'blues punk' albums, and on the other hand it's even imaginative to think that Cave was influenced by this when turning his / their music towards a bolder 'singer / songwriter'-style, which may be heard on his albums of the second half of the 1990s.
That said, the songs here are typical Forster material about (his new-found) love with realistic everyday narrations dealing with relationships - he and Grant ("Leave Here Satisfied") and about Karin ("Heart Out to Tender", "I've Been Looking for Somebody"), and he makes sure not to try to replicate Cave's voice but instead cleverly keeps to his own usual melancholic vocal.
The songs, the style and the production sound all makes this anything but a discontinued journey of The Go-Betweens or the follow-up to their fine '88 album. Instead it marks a fine start of Forster's solo career.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
