Robert Forster | The Thornbury Theatre | Melbourne | 12th September
The Thornbury Theatre was full of round tables with black tablecloths, more evocative of a formal dinner than a rock show. Me and an old friend I brought along were able to sit unmolested on the staircase at the side of the room, leaving the formal seating to older patrons who might need it. Robert Forster took the stage right on time, in a deep purple suit. He speaks in a stilted, but considered drawl “good evening, and thank you for coming along tonight” he entoned, and played Tell It Back To Me to open the night.
He is touring his new solo album Strawberries with his ‘Swedish Band’, who he brought with him to Australia for the tour. He played a sweeping setlist from across his career, telling short, punctuated stories to the crowd before most of the songs. He introduced the Go-Betweens song Clouds. “This next song was written in Wooloomooloo in 1988. I wrote this song one morning, it was the 4th ever song I wrote. I was uh, very happy that I did, and uh, this is it”.
His Swedish drummer, in a green and purple striped polo shirt with well maintained blonde hair was a little overbearing, in the more delicate acoustics of the theatre his snare sometimes overpowered Robert’s acoustic guitar. Our favourite of the band was the bassist, who wore a traditional high cut vest and had the classic Northern-European harsh skinfade with a long grey top of hair swooping high over the top of his head. The guitarist was impressive too, finishing the solo Robert began on his acoustic in I Love Myself And I Always Have.
Halfway through the night Robert Forster introduced ‘Lina Langendorf’ to play saxophone, and switched too late from a high-five to a handshake to greet her over the bulk of his acoustic guitar, making for a funny moment on stage. He played Draining The Pool, and one lady got up from her seat and danced at the front of the stage for the whole song. More people were moving now and a small contingent of fans was gathering at the wings of the stage where they had free range to dance to the songs they liked. He kept the outro going, motioning to the drummer with his left hand and to the guitarist with his right, and the crowd cheered through the outro of the song at his gesticulations and contortions behind the mic.
Photo Credit: Stephen Booth
He played Love Is A Sign, Was There Anything I Could Do, and The Morning, an exceptional song from his solo-discography, and left the stage briefly before returning for his encore. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”, playing Dive For Your Memory. Robert, now in a vest far slimmer and more modern then the one the bass player wore, strummed with swagger and strutted around the stage, staggering off mic at times. Not in a drunken way, but with the naked confidence of someone who’s been there a thousand times before.
He closed out the set with Streets Of Your Town, Spring Rain and finally Surfing Magazines, for which he kept spurring on the band to extend the outro while he pointed at people around the theatre thanking them and cracking jokes, dragging out his last few moments on stage for the night. After the show I tried and failed to talk to him at the merch desk but he was too busy signing books and hearing other peoples stories to hear mine.
One of the country's greatest artists still puts on an exceptional show. Incredibly cool and deeply honest, the show was as full of surreal idiosyncrasies as it was of moments of divine transcendence.