In pop music, what usually works the best is the thing that sounds as if it took the least effort. Twenty-five years after Grant McLennan and Robert Forster joined forces in Brisbane, Australia, and called themselves The Go-Betweens, and three years into a reunion gambit that follows a decade working solo, the pair seems very comfortable with the reduced expectations of a second-act career (not that the product itself is in any way reduced).
One has to think really hard to come up with the name of an artist who can lay claim to eight albums of original material with nary a dud among them. The secret of The Go-Betweens, in fact, may not be reduced expectations, but rather not living up to expectations at all. In "Too Much of One Thing" from the Go-Betweens' latest album, "Bright Yellow Bright Orange," Forster puts it this way: "You might think you see purpose, when what you're seeing is a band."
A band is exactly what the crowd at Shibuya Club Quattro on June 9 heard, though what they came to see was The Go-Betweens' long-overdue concert debut in Japan. Befitting a group that was once considered the ultimate cult band of the '80s, the audience was relatively small but very intense, mouthing the words to all the songs and bringing the quartet back for three sets of encores. For its part, the band was remarkably relaxed, like they were playing for friends in their living room. As spectacle, it provided the perfect opportunity to study the two partners in contrast: McLennan (compact, effusive, abstract) vs. Forster (tall, laconic, dry).