Live Review: Robert Forster

For years now Brisbane Festival has been utilising beautiful Speigeltent installations to house its music programs, the original travelling pop-up music venues adding a touch of class and old world charm to proceedings.

Not that either of those things are in short supply tonight anyway; as the dapper, unmistakable figure of Brisbane’s favourite musical son Robert Forster takes the stage with his four band members in tow and starts with two tracks from his recent solo foray Songs To Play — Learn To Burn and I’m So Happy For You — the besotted crowd are transfixed from the get-go. Yet when Forster moves onto Head Full Of Steam — tonight’s first number from his legendary Brisbane alma mater The Go-Betweens — the tent's mood lifts noticeably, that band's considerable legacy even more profound of late with the release of Foster's new memoirs, Grant & I. They continue with The Go-Betweens' Surfing Magazines — not so much about the elegant wasters described so eloquently in the lyrics as about being stuck in Brisbane and yearning for escape — then offer up Born To A Family and the ever-gorgeous Draining The Pool For You, which tonight descends into a faux-fade-out finale.

At this juncture, the band — members of whom have been coming and going at regular intervals — exits en masse and Forster remains with just an acoustic guitar to deliver an exquisite solo version of Karen, the librarian ode which was the B-side to The Go-Betweens' first-ever single way back in 1978. After this beautiful soliloquy Forster is re-joined by his wife Karin Bäumler on violin for an exquisite run through of When She Sang About Angels, before the rest of the band — Scott Bromiley and Luke McDonald from The John Steel Singers swapping guitar, bass and keys and Chris O’Neill on drums — return to the fray to facilitate charming solo paean I Love Myself (And I Always Have). Just when you think things couldn't get any more poignant, they throw in a gorgeous and reverential rendition of Cattle & Cane — to many the high-water mark of songs penned by Grant McLennan, Forster's much-missed partner-in-crime — and then the troupe bring it all home with Songwriters On The Run, I Can Do, Clouds and early solo number Heart Out To Tender.

They don't usually allow encores at such events but Mr Forster plays by his own rules, the band returning to a heroes' reception and finishing with rare Forster/McLennan co-write Too Much Of One Thing and perennial favourite Spring Rain, which seems an entirely appropriate conclusion and not just because outside the tent it’s a rainy Brisbane spring night. An exquisite hometown recital by a man who has left a colossal imprint on this city.