Robert Forster – The Candle And The Flame (2023)
The eighth solo album from former Go-Betweens front man, Robert Forster is a family affair. Faced with the news that wife Karen Baumler was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer, son Louis adds guitar/bass/percussion and daughter Loretta adds additional guitar on the home recorded tracks. What stands out immediately is the stellar guitar playing on song such as “It’s Only Poison” and the warm tones of “Go Free”.
Album highlight, “Tender Years” is a beautiful tribute to his wife where Forster sings, “Images of her are vivid/Her beauty has not withered”. “The Roads” is another acoustic track about the roads we travel that eventually lead back home. First song, “She’s a Fighter” just repeats the title over and over. The driving acoustic guitar adds tension in a fight where his wife is “fighting for good”. The Candle And The Flame is another classy, mature record from the elder statesman of the indie rock community.
7.5/10
…not about having someone…
Leonard Cohen – Songs From A Room (1969)
After an aborted session with David Crosby, Leonard Cohen turned to producer Bob Johnston for his second album, Songs From A Room. Starting with the classic, “Bird On The Wire”, the plaintive song adds strings to the background. Here Cohen opens up, for better or worse, as he sings, “If I have been unkind/I hope that you can just let it go by”. Several songs are biblical in nature and recall Bob Dylan on tracks such as “Story of Isaac” and “The Old Revolution”. With a touch of echo in the vocal, Cohen sings of an acquaintance who committed suicide at too young of an age on the haunting “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy”.
The songs on the sophomore album sound more stark and cold than than Cohen’s classic debut album from 1967. Whereas the cover of that album shows the singer in colour, here he is shown in black/white, just a shadow. The album warms up towards the end with “Lady Midnight” that adds an organ/keyboard in the background and closes with the simple folk pop sound of “Tonight Will Be Fine” that will have the listener nodding along as Leonard Cohen sings “and I know from your smile/That tonight will be fine…for awhile”.
7.5/10
The Light Appears 