Spring Hill Fair

On their third album, the Go-Betweens added a fourth member--bass player Robert Vickers--to their line-up and this move allowed Grant McLennan to change instruments, adding a second guitar to the band's sound. Opening with the brilliant "Bachelor Kisses" and "Five Words" (the former by McLennan and the latter by McLennan and band co-founder Robert Forster), this record was as critically acclaimed as their previous work.
Three Forster songs, including the stunning "Part Company", follow the one-two punch of the album's opening. Forster, the primary songwriter on the band's earliest recordings, shows that his deeply personal style of songwriting is as vital to the band as McLennan's looser style. By the time one gets to the sixth song, "Slow, Slow Music"--a song resembling the Talking Heads in its breathless vocals and heavy bass line but going places the Heads didn't travel--it is clear that this is a rather special record. And there is still the Velvet Underground-styled talk-song "River of Money" and the beautiful jangle of "Unkind and Unwise" to come. A classic.|