ANYBODY who is familiar with Robert Forster's work with seminal '80s indie-pop band The Go-Betweens knows he's always possessed an innate ability to articulate love.
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There was the tortured Dive For Your Memory on the band's 1988 masterpiece 16 Lovers Lane about Forster's break-up with drummer Lindy Morrison.
The earlier Head Full Of Steam off the 1986 album Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express offered a glimpse at the happier days of that famed relationship when Forster sang, "Just to chase her, a fool's dream."
Yet the recent events in Forster's family life have been too immense for even him to express in lyrics.
In 2021 his wife of 33 years and sometimes musical collaborator, German violinist Karin Baumler, was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and so began an exhausting round of chemotherapy and hospital visits.
As a means to take their minds off Baumler's health, the couple would play a series of songs Forster had began writing in 2018 at night in their suburban Brisbane home.
Eventually those songs were recorded over a six-month period for Forster's eighth solo album The Candle and The Flame.
"Life can be tough at times, even without a cancer diagnosis, and it can be confronting and very full on," Forster says.
"I find going into a film or book or music very therapeutic. It opens up another reality almost, which is obviously based on real life, but I can go in, enjoy and lose myself within.
"I find that really rewarding and soothing. It's almost most like meditating and it really calms you down and you go away from problems and pressure. I find music has always done that for me with other mediums like books and films."
Besides the mantra-like opener She's A Fighter, the other eight tracks were written prior to Baumler's diagnosis. For Forster, her ongoing battle is too personal for words.
"I don't know what to write about," he says. "I'm in the middle of it, and as time goes by it will settle down and I might start to get some feelings and be able to put those words in the melodies I've got."
But in one of those nerve-tingling coincidences, as if the universe was trying to communicate with Forster, he was already reflecting on his deep love for Baumler prior to her diagnosis.
The track Tender Years with lines like "I'm in a story with her, I know I can't live without her," sits comfortably next to The Go-Betweens' finest moments.
"Obviously when we were playing them it struck us they almost had another meaning," he says. "They got deeper and the songs became more precious than we thought.
"It was spooky, almost. Another strong emotional part of the process was singing these words that I'd written before Karin's diagnosis, but seemed to be definitely touching on what had happened."
Another theme present on The Candle and The Flame is reflecting on one's life.
The 65-year-old explains COVID and the subsequent lockdowns naturally steered one towards self-reflection.
It's impossible not to interpret the country-tinged track I Don't Do Drugs I Do Time as a kind of survivor story. Forster quit drinking in the late '90s following a hepatitis C diagnosis and he hasn't used heroin since the '80s.
Meanwhile his best friend and Go-Betweens collaborator Grant McLennan, who never beat his substance demons, died from a heart attack in 2006 aged 48, ending the band's fruitful second coming.
The Candle and The Flame's closing track When I Was A Young Man tells the story of a 21-year-old Forster seduced by the music of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Talking Heads and Television.
"I'm happy I can look back at that younger person and I know what's going to happen to them obviously, and there's some bumps in the road, but that's just part of it," Forster says.
"You probably have to do them to learn some things about life. In a way I still feel close to that 21-year-old."
It was around the age of 21 that Forster formalised, outside of Baumler, the other most important relationship of his life.
In a theatre course in 1975 at the University of Queensland, Forster had met country boy Grant McLennan. Three years later the pair would form The Go-Betweens and go on to become one of Australian music's most revered songwriting partnerships.
Knowing that people have that sort of feeling for a band I was in, both listeners and people in groups, I find that wonderful.
- Robert Forster on The Go-Betweens
Throughout the '80s The Go-Betweens, which included the core members Forster's then partner Lindy Morrison (drums) and McLennan's then girlfriend Amanda Brown (violin, guitar, keys), were mostly based in London and released the classic albums Before Hollywood (1983) and 16 Lovers Lane (1988). The latter is a rare Australian inclusion in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
The Go-Betweens dissolved in 1989 as Forster and McLennan embarked on solo careers, before they reformed for three albums in the 2000s with a new line-up. Their final album Oceans Apart (2005) finally delivered the band's first and only ARIA Award for Best Adult Contemporary Album.
It's almost cliche to describe The Go-Betweens as underrated. While they never enjoyed mass commercial success in the '80s, they have maintained something ultimately greater - relevancy.
They remain highly influential; from icons such as Paul Kelly to young indie bands like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever.
"It makes me very, very happy," Forster says of The Go-Betweens' enduring success. "When we were making music back in the '80s, I thought if we did good work it might last, but you can't predict anything.
"I'm very happy that young people are finding the band. I can remember when I was younger and the artists I really liked and was a fan of, I can remember those feelings I had for those bands.
"Knowing that people have that sort of feeling for a band I was in, both listeners and people in groups, I find that wonderful."
Robert Forster makes his debut at Lizotte's on May 28. The Candle and The Flame is out now.
