Arguably Australia's greatest pop group ever, The Go-Betweens seemed
to save the best for last when they split in 1989. (They reunited in 1999,
and have issued two more studio recordings since that time). 16 Lovers
Lane is simply breathtaking; it is a deeply moving, aurally sensual collection
of songs about relationships and the broken side of love that never lapses
into cheap sentimentality or cynicism. Songwriters Robert Forster and
Grant McLennan had always been visionary when it came to charting personal
and relational melancholy and heartbreak, but here, their resolve focused
on charting the depths of the romantic's soul when it has been disillusioned
or crestfallen, is simply and convincingly taut. While it's true that
the group was going through its own version of a soap opera-styled romantic
saga, that emotional quagmire seemingly fueled its energies and focus,
resulting in an album so texturally rich, lyrically sharp, and musically
honest, its effect is nothing less than searing on an any listener who
doesn't have sawdust instead of blood in his or her veins.Opening with
McLennan's "Love Goes On," the stage is set for a kind of refined
yet primal emotional transference that pop music is rarely capable of
revealing. As he sings: "There are times when I want you/I want you
so much I could bust/I know a thing about lovers/Lovers lie down in trust/The
people next door they got problems/They got things they can't name/I know
about things about lovers/ Lovers don't feel any shame/Late not night
when the light's down low/The candle burns to the end/I know a thing about
darkness/Darkness ain't my friend/Love goes on anyway," the doorway
to the heart and its secrets opens. In the grain of his voice lie the
flowers in the dustbin whose names are desperation and affirmation. With
its hyperactive acoustic guitars, Amanda Brown's cooing string arrangements,
and the deftly layered, subtly played brass instruments, the tune becomes
a gauzy anthem; it celebrates the ravaged heart as a beacon of strained
hope in the entryway to a hall of bewilderment. He follows it with "Quiet
Heart," a song whose opening was admittedly influenced in structure
by U2's "With Or Without You," but blows it away lyrically and
with its subtly shifting melody and harmony between the guitars. Brown's
multi-layered strings actually stride the backbeat's pulse. His protagonist
speaks to an absent lover. His ache offers a view of his own weakness,
desperation, and an all-consuming tenderness: "I tried to tell you/But
I can only say when we're apart/How I miss your quiet, quiet heart."
Forster seems to underline McLennan' s raw emotionalism with his painterly,
nearly baroque, "Love Is A Sign," where images from visual art,
remembered scenarios, and real life brokenness intermingle effortlessly
with the elegance of mandolins, a string orchestra, and a shimmering bass
line. With "Streets Of Your Town," the Go-Betweens scored a
minor hit in the U.K., and even got played on American radio for a moment,
but despite the fact that it has the most memorable hook on a record filled
with them, it merely underscores how constant the quality is on the record.
Evidenced further by "The Devil's Eye," and the shattering closer
"Dive For Your Memory," 16 Lovers Lane is melancholy and somber
in theme, but gloriously and romantically presented. Despite the fact
that band has but a cult following, even in the 21st century, the Go-Betweens
have nonetheless given us a far more literate, magnificently written,
performed, and produced slab of pop classicism, than Fleetwood Mac's wonderfully
coked out, love as co-dependency fest, Rumours.
(by Thom Jurek, All Music Guide)