In the eighties, if you wanted your witty, bookish pop angst-ridden, trailing flamboyance and well acquainted with Top Of The Pops, you looked up from your Wilde, moved over to the stereo and put The Smiths on. If, on the other hand, you wanted it quietly elegant, sophisticated and lacking even so much as a formal introduction to TOTP, you laid down your Housman, walked to the record player and put the needle on a Go-Betweens record.
They may never have gone beyond (admittedly large) cult status to the mainstream, but it's impossible to deny that Robert Forster and Grant McLennan's carefully crafted melodies and sharp narratives didn't make them one of Australia's finest exports (after Castelmaine and silly hats obviously) before they split for solo careers in 1989.
For tonight's shipment, the first proper Go-Betweens gig in yonks, the place is rammed. Crammed full of thirtysomethings who cheer and applaud as rabidly as schoolkids after being told their exams have been cancelled. When Forster does an improptu mime behind the stage curtain, several of them practically pass out in delight. They're clearly not too bothered that the embodiment of dapper intellectual crumpet has taken on the style of an aging Vaudevillian comedian after colliding with a deckchair.
Fortunately, it's only their dress sense (Grant himself, surrounded by wall-to-wall whistle and flutes, looks like he works in a leisure centre) and their youth which has gone. 'Bye Bye Pride' is nothing short of glorious, a warm embrace of wistfulness with new bassist Adele Pickvance's backing vocals every bit as sweet as erstwhile drummer Lindy Morrison's. Not all the old songs have weathered quite so well -opener 'Your Turn, My Turn' from their first album is lumpen and ambling (and, worse still, ungrammatical!) while 'Streets Of Your Town' the most gorgeous song about wife battering ever written, lacks conviction.
But, as Forster reminds us, there's 'Danger In The Past' and tonight they are very much rooted in the present, playing new album 'The Friends Of Rachel Worth' in its entirety and proving that exquisite songwriting doesn't have to leave you when you hit forty. 'Orpheus Beach' is mesmeric, while 'Bachelor Kisses' is a nugget of yearning loveliness.
And they haven't lost their talent for clever, yet affecting lyrics - 'He Lives My Life' is a sad, yet witty mediation on not getting what you feel you deserve, and during 'When She Sang About Angels', Forster, in usual deadpan, semi-spoken drawl, delivers a truly killer line, "When she sang about a boy/ Kurt Cobain/I thought what a shame /It wasn't about Tom Verlaine".
In a way that sums up the Go-Betweens themselves - classic intellectual songwriters, lamentably forgotten by the chart buying masses in favour of something more sensational. It's time they were noticed.
