Robert Forster ProfileClosing in on 50 years since he started his musical journey in the back streets of Brisbane, Robert Forster is still on top of his game - perfectly evinced by last year’s stunning ninth solo album Strawberries - and tonight he’s wrapping up an Australian run backed by the same crew of Swedish musicians who helped him put that record together during a recent sojourn in Stockholm.
A solid crowd has turned up to the stately Princess Theatre to cheer on their hometown hero, but the show is derailed early - after the band’s opening number, Tell It Back To Me, there’s a commotion in the crowd, and it transpires that a punter has collapsed and needs urgent medical attention.
The house lights come on, and the band wanders offstage, and while help is rendered immediately, it takes the best part of an hour for an ambulance to arrive and stretcher the poor soul into the night, at which point the band re-emerges and decides to start the set from scratch, offering another full rendition of Tell It Back To Me to wrestle back the set’s momentum.
This is ultimately the only break in the ensuing performance as Forster explains that they’re forgoing the scheduled intermission (and, as it transpires, the usual encore break) to ensure that we’re still gifted the full experience. He further elaborates that he drank a glass of wine during the unplanned interruption and - as a long-term teetotaller - is now feeling nicely buzzed, though it’s hard to discern a difference in his usual debonair demeanour.
As they continue with solo staple I Love Myself (And I Always Have), which dissolves into a country-tinged guitar hoedown, it’s abundantly clear that the new band has elevated these songs to an entirely new level (which, as a long-term Forster devotee, feels weird, as they’ve never felt like they needed reinvigoration or revival, but you’d be a fool to look a gift horse in the mouth).
For their part, the sharply-dressed Swedes - guitarist Peter Moren (of Peter Bjorn and John fame, also the chief architect of this new union), bassist Jonas Thorell and drummer Magnus Olsson - seem delighted to be sharing the stage with such an esteemed figure, fully invested in serving each song and pulling shapes off to each side as the music flows through them.
Forster is now in a strange space of career equilibrium, with his nine solo albums now equalling the nine beloved records he made as co-frontman for The Go-Betweens and the set is split almost straight down the middle to reflect this parity, solo tracks like Always and a suite of the Strawberries numbers - Breakfast On The Train, Foolish I Know and Good To Cry - nestling perfectly alongside Go-Betweens classics like Clouds, Too Much Of One Thing, Draining The Pool For You and German Farmhouse.
For All Of The Time, Forster seems thrilled to be able to introduce esteemed Scandinavian saxophonist Lina Langendorf to the stage - who graced a number of tracks during the Strawberries sessions - and she accordingly adds a new layer to proceedings which proves both fun and funky.
For Strawberries’ title track, the legend is equally delighted to welcome his wife and long-term musical partner Karin Bäumler to duet with him, the bond between them virtually tangible as they sing, staring into each other's eyes.
The song itself already exists as an expression of joy at Bäumler overcoming the recent cancer scare which informed her husband’s incredible The Candle & The Flame (2023) opus, context which makes the almost mundane experiences lauded in its lyrics seem beautifully profound.
There’s still something slightly surreal about seeing a local legend playing with a band of virtual strangers (to us) from the far side of the planet, but when evergreen staples like Was There Anything I Could Do? are transported to new heights before your eyes, it’s best to just keep going with the flow.
One Bird In The Sky is given an immaculate drawn-out crescendo, Head Full Of Steam sounds as good as it’s ever been presented, and the set proper concludes with a rollicking rendition of Learn To Burn, Forster eschewing his guitar and going into full frontman mode as it morphs into a full-blown stomper - replete with near-choreographed dance moves - to reach an incredible finale to planned proceedings.
Due to the earlier delays, the encore break is given short shrift, the set continuing with just Foster and Bäumler duetting on the stripped-back Songwriters On The Run - the obscure solo track which bloomed over time into Forster’s first fictional novel that dropped earlier this year - the band returning to the fray as Forster strums the familiar opening chords to gorgeous Go-Betweens number Dive For Your Memory.
Early solo highlight 121 is introduced by the singer tying it temporally to the 1992 version of Brisbane and his dalliance at the time with the Custard/C.O.W. crew, before we’re treated to an all-to-rare Forster take on Streets of Your Town - the timeless song written and sung by his much-missed partner-in-crime Grant McLennan, and delivered here in beautiful homage - after which he bursts into Spring Rain, and as the anthem concludes with a stunning burst of harmonies another staple is somehow transformed and elevated before our eyes.
It’s now getting close to midnight, but there’s so much love in the room as Baumler and Langendorf return once more for a final full-band version of Surfing Magazines, which has the whole house singing en masse and Moren bringing things home with a wash of completely tasteful guitar histrionics.
It’s been an utterly compelling and transfixing experience, though slightly ponderous in how something that you didn’t think needed improving at all was somehow just made so much better anyway.
As the crowd dissipates into the Brisbane night, thoughts inevitably turn to hoping that the lady from the start of the night is okay and makes a full recovery, but also that this isn’t the only opportunity we get to see this long-term legend of our local scene shine so brightly amidst this tailor-made new construct from distant shores.
