Robert Forster "The Evangelist" (2008)

The Evangelist

release date: Apr. 21, 2008

format: cd

[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,78]

producer: Mark Wallis & Dave Ruffy

label: Tuition - nationality: Australia

Track highlights: 1. "If It Rains" - 2. "Demon Days" (solo live) - 3. "Pandanus" - 4. "Did She Overtake You" - 5. "The Evangelist" - 6. "Let Your Light in, Babe" - 9. "It Ain't Easy" - 10. "From Ghost Town"

5th studio album by Robert Forster is his follow-up to Warm Nights (Sep. 1996) and thus released a full 12 years after his most recent solo album - and there are a various reasons to that [see The Friends of Rachel Worth, album #7 by The Go-Betweens], which among others things involves the re-formation of The Go-Betweens in '99 and, in particular, the sudden death of Forster's musical friend, Grant McLennan, May 2006. The two songwriters had begun work on what should have been the band's tenth album together, and three of these are included here - as tracks #2, #6, and #9. One year following McLennan's death, Forster resumed his solo career with a series of concerts featuring Adele Pickvance and Glenn Thompson, and in the autumn of 2007 the trio returned to the same studio in London where they had recorded the band's final Oceans Apart (2005) in company of McLennan and producers Wallis and Ruffy, now to record this very album.

Musically, it doesn't fall far from the band's final outing, and in Forster's solo discography it's perhaps a little cleaner than most his other albums, although lyrically it naturally includes the grief over his painful loss. The album also stands a bit on its own in that it contains much of the soul and colours of The Go-Betweens and in that way positions itself somewhere in between Forster solo and the band, which also was put to rest with the passing of McLennan. And by containing tracks written for the band, it's bound to be very special. Nearly all Forster's solo albums have a certain unfinished quality to them, but The Evangelist appears quite elaborated as a whole, and together with his solo debut Danger in the Past (1990) this clearly stands as one of his best. Then is it even Forster's best solo? And yes, I think it is - and then it's probably his only solo album, which was partly made with the help of McLennan.

Highly recommended.

[ allmusic.com, Q Magazine, Slant 4 / 5, 👍Pitchfork 7,6 / 10, Uncut 5 / 5, The Guardian 3 / 5 stars ]