Taking Sides: Go-Betweens vs Crowded House

ok, this is glib, but: the go-betweens sound like a simple melodic guitar band, but turn out to be writing these staggeringly powerful vignettes that get under your skin and on a good day reduce you to tears.

crowded house sound like a simple melodic guitar band and, umm, are.

I think Neil Finn is a different sort of songwriter than Foster and McLennan, and touched with a different sort of genius. More impressionistic, less literary, perhaps. Melodically, I think Neil is superior to the Go-Betweens guys, love them though I do, but the Go-Betweens so often offer more than just melody, which Neil sometimes does not.

Pre-Neil, Split Enz is mostly quirk without a purpose.

Well, Youth did produce the last CH album, Alex.

It was actually Finn that prompted Youth to phone up Jaz (who was living off New Zealand...on his own island...for a while), which prompted their mid-90's reunion (resulting in Pandemonium and Democracy).

Maybe Crowded House vs INXS or something...

I still listen to many CH songs with pleasure: "Don't Dream It's Over" deserved all its blanket airplay, "Can't Carry On," "Better Be Home Soon," "She Goes On" - all marvelous. But I don't have much room in my life for more than one Perfect Pop band, so...

The logic isn't as straightforward as you think. My label had nothing to do with which label(s) the GB's were signed. The keyword is "aesthetic." I would never call, say, the Cure or Psychedelic Furs "indie" - they always wanted (and eventually got) big pop hits.

The GB's, by contrast, SAID they wanted them, but then seemed to take a perverse pleasure in undermining their intentions, via producer and arrangement choices, etc.

You're right though, Viking: the GB's could have been a bit more crass. "More Songs About Pussy and Coming" might have sealed the deal.

Also, how cool is it that Neil Finn briefly roped Johnny Marr into his band and regularly covered both "There is a Light that Will Never Go Out" and "How Soon is Now?" That's just great. And as much as I love, love love the Go-Betweens, they always seemed to exist exclusively in their own insular little world. Finn's unbridled love of melody above all else keeps him a very strong contender.

I really fail to see much in the way of self pity on Go-Betweens records. Could you explain a bit. I could see say the Smiths being acused of self pity, but the Go-Betweens?

about as cool as the fiery pits of hell on a summer's day, with a half-price deal on chilli and extra-strong mints.

I like Go-Betweens, I find them somehow sometimes lacking a bit, for my taste--but when they hit it, like on what I guess is my fave track from "Tallulah," commonly (?) referred to as their best ("Spirit of a Vampyre"), they're ace. I guess I don't actually hear them as pop music that would've ever been played on the radio, though--which is not to say it's not at times great pop music. Above it's asked, why do these bands who are aware and popwise never hit the charts? Like Big Star, who like the G-Bs are cited as one of them "if they'd only gotten a break, 'September Gurls' -----fill in the blank--- would've been a massive hit." Well, maybe, but I think perhaps there was a basic hunger for success lacking there, in both cases? Maybe "Right Here" and "When My Baby's Beside Me" could've been hits, I dunno. Anyway, I say G-Bs, more "depth" there, but Crowded House was probably more immediately enjoyable...

I really fail to see much in the way of self pity on Go-Betweens records. Could you explain a bit. I could see say the Smiths being acused of self pity, but the Go-Betweens?

Ok, delete self pitying from that sentence. As for them complaining about lack of promotion, I certainly don't remember that at the time. They had plenty of good press and their work was advertised pretty well too. Maybe having a whiny voiced lead singer and no tunes was their Achilles heel. I bought two lp's and the Robert Forster solo album in the vain hope of finding the same thing other people were finding, but no, nothing there.

was it? er, thank you!

OTM ed

They may have striven for hits eventually, but they seemed to lack an innate sense of how that worked. That's probably the indie-ness there: their singing was, er, limited (and divided between two singers) and the lyrics were pretty opaque; they taught one another how to play, and pretty strangely too, the rhythm section frequently stumbling into odd time signatures. As much as they fleetingly toyed with sounding like, say, Howard Jones (apparently), that original attempt at a Television/Patti Smith/Monkees hybrid (with modest variations) was what came naturally.

I like the way the GBs feel like they would be particularly hard to duplicate from scratch, as they weren't doing that great a job of channelling classic pop at all.