robert-forster-inferno
Robert Forster photographed in Caloundra, Queensland, on 25 September 2018 by Bleddyn Butcher

The Go-Betweens' Robert Forster preps new LP 'Inferno' (watch a video), tells us his Top 10 of 2018

Robert Forster photographed in Caloundra, Queensland, on 26 September 2018 by Bleddyn Butcher
Robert Forster photographed in Caloundra, Queensland, on 26 September 2018 by Bleddyn Butcher

Robert Forster, co-founder of The Go-Betweens, will release new solo album, Inferno, on March 1 via Tapete Records. This is his first in four years, following 2015’s Songs to Play. He made it in Berlin with producer Victor Van Vugt, who worked on Forster’s 1990 solo debut (and records by PJ Harvey, Beth Orton, Nick Cave, Luna and more), with a band including Scott Bromley and Karin Bãumler, who both were on Songs to Play, plus new collaborators Earl Harvin (Tindersticks), and Michael Mühlhaus (Blumfeld). Most of the record was tracked live in the studio. While he hasn’t shared a full song yet there is a short film, where a couple German music bloggers visit Forster in the studio ask him a few questions and he plays them a bit of the LP’s “I’ll Look After You.” (In the video he says there are 10 songs on the album, but it’s now nine.) The film premieres in this post and you can watch that, and check out artwork and tracklist below.

Robert will also be touring with a full band in 2019. Right now there are only European and UK dates, and those are listed below. There should also be the second volume of The Go-Betweens Anthology box set sometime in 2019. Stay tuned.

We also asked Robert for a Top 10 of 2018 to which he kindly obliged. His list includes books, music and more. Check out the list, including Robert’s thoughts on each item, below.

Robert Forster photographed in Caloundra, Queensland, on 25 September 2018 by Bleddyn Butcher

Robert Forster – Inferno tracklist:
1. Crazy Jane On The Day Of Judgement
2. No Fame
3. Inferno (Brisbane in Summer)
4. The Morning
5. Life Has Turned A Page
6. Remain
7. I’ll Look After You
8. I’m Gonna Tell It
9. One Bird In The Sky

Robert Forster’s Top 10 2018

1. Barbara Pym – ‘Excellent Women’
I re-read this book and enjoyed it more the second time. Written in the nineteen fifties, it is the most unusual and hard to define book I know. The central character is, by her own admission, an unattractive, non-assertive woman in her thirties, who devotes her time to her work and church life in London in the years after the Second World War. She is the heroine of the
story, and the centre of an extremely eccentric set of characters. Beautifully written and full of slyly observed truth.

2. Benedict Wells – ‘The End of Loneliness’
Written by a young German author. I read this on a flight from Brisbane to Zurich. It is a moving, finely constructed story of a young man’s life.

3. Foyle’s Bookshop. Tottenham Court Rd. London.
It’s a big bookshop, but I like it. And like all bookshops experiences my blood pressure levels are lowered the minute I walk through the door. If I could live in a bookshop I think I would make 110 years. Most things you want are here, and good food and coffee.

4. Lost Animal – ‘Lose the Baby’
A song from Melbourne. This will grab you. Powerful yet finely done…

5. The Retirement of Robert Redford.
With ‘The Old Man And The Gun’ he is vowing to stop film acting. Redford
has been an important male presence on the screen for fifty years. No macho shit, no big studio violence, he is an intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful actor who choose films through his career that reflected these qualities. He was a role model for me in the seventies – as a teenage boy I watched him in ‘The Sting’, ‘All The Presidents Men’ and ‘Three Days Of The Condor, and wanted to be him. He also had the best hair in Hollywood.

6. David Byrne Live in Berlin in June.
The reinvention of the rock show. An amazing, refreshing concert experience.

7. Daniel Kramer ‘Bob Dylan – A Year and a Day’
A big thick book of photographs of Dylan through 1964-65. In the haunted house of my mind there is always a room dedicated to Bob. in the mid-sixties. he was moving from folk star to pop star, while inhibiting a world you can only call bohemian paradise. Wine bottles, endless cigarettes, sunglasses, playing chess, great songs. It’s all too beautiful as The Small Faces once said..

8. Berlin in Summer
I recorded an album there in the summer, and was in town for a month. I got to know the city better and loved its energy. And they are getting better with their coffee.

9. Visiting Mullumbimby Farmers Market
It’s on a Friday and is an authentic hippie style market. I was there in April and a band was playing called The Button Collective; a wonderful three piece acoustic group playing Woody Guthrie and wild Australian folk ballads. They were like the market – cliche free. No professional stall people who go market to market with bored expressions on their faces selling ‘handmade’ stuff they have brought off a supplier. It was a real experience – hard to find these days.

10. Touched a Jeff Koons Dog Sculpture.
It was in a friends house.

ROBERT FORSTER – 2019 TOUR DATES
28 Apr Stockholm Nalen Klubb
29 Apr Kopenhagen Vega
30 Apr Berlin Festsaal Kreuzberg
01 May Hamburg Knust
03 May Münster Gleis 22
04 May Bielefeld Forum
05 May Bonn Harmonie – Bonn
07 May Frankfurt Zoom Club
08 May Schorndorf Manufaktur
09 May München Feierwerk
10 May Wien Theater Akzent
11 May Linz Posthof-Zeitkultur am Hafen
14 May London Union Chapel
15 May Bristol The Fleece
16 May Manchester Band on the Wall
17 May Glasgow King Tuts
19 May Dublin Button Factory
20 May Cork Cyprus Avenue