CD REVIEW: ROBERT FORSTER – Songs To Play

Shane | 19 November 2015 | 1 Reply

CD REVIEW: ROBERT FORSTER – Songs To Play
EMI
18 September, 2015
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
7 ½ /10

With a wry wit and sprightly swagger ex-Go Betweens starts Songs To Play, his first album since the melancholy The Evangelist seven years ago, with the jaunty Learn To Burn.

Not all of his tunes are as instantly catchy as this gem: a songwriter’s songwriter, Forster’s tunes are often on a long fuse, needing a few listens for them to burrow in. They’re always a bit special though, so it would be an amateurs mistake to write them off at first listen.

It’s the songs that are key here: the musicianship is organic and bright, courtesy of The John Steel Singers band and Forster’s wife Karin Baumler’s violin, Forster’s vocals half spoken, are often wide of holding a tune. The songs though, that’s the payoff.

A Poet Walks is a reflective gem with a tango-ish rhythm, horns & glockenspiel peppering the mix seductively. Love Is Where It Is is more of a bossa nova, Forster so laid back he’s almost horizontal as he digs into the lazy Brazilian groove. Turn On The Rain is the lightest of ballads, its simplicity belying it’s tenderness. I Love Myself (And I Always Have) sees Forster’s tongue firmly in cheek, but don’t for a moment think he isn’t making a serious statement whilst having fun with it.

Disaster In Motion is a song of lamentation to close the album, but like the rest of this collection, it is musically bright and sunny. Every ending is a new beginning, and it reminds us that even though this is the end of Songs To Play, undoubtedly Forster will be back soon enough with more – it’s in him, and it’s gotta come out.

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