By Andrew Mosley

WHEN? Friday 10 October, tour runs through 19 October 2025

It’s almost 40 years since I first clapped eyes on and lent ears to the wonder of The Go-Betweens.

• Read on for reasons including how the former Go-Between incorporates the band’s songs into this set

They were on the Whistle Test. I recall they played Spring Rain, but history says it was Head Full of Steam. A misremembrance? Maybe it was both.

I discovered they were Australian, from the other side of the world. Incredible to me. 

The next week, searching the bargain racks at Anagram Records in less glamorous Keighley, I found the 12-inch of Spring Rain and it was 50p. I was hooked.

But this is not about me. 

Most of Cardiff doesn’t know it, but Robert Forster, one of the band’s two singer-songwriters (Grant died in 2006), is on stage at The Gate, a Presbyterian church which sits on the corner of an unassuming street of terraced houses, and now acts as an arts and community centre, among other positives.

Robert is performing with His Swedish Band to an enthralled audience, sitting on pews, worshipping a songwriting god. It’s a crass analogy, but…

He’s 68, tall, angular and in good shape, his mannerisms, voice and playing not too far removed from that late-20s TV version of himself.

His humour comes across as dry, his persona slightly aloof, but like his songs, the warmth and beauty, the intelligence, eventually break you. Perhaps that’s it. The fast-paced nature of the pop world and its fans couldn’t spare the time to get to know The Go-Betweens, so they never broke the charts. Not once.

The band opens with the lovely, whimsical title track of new album Strawberries, which could sit easily in a musical or one of those TV programmes they don’t show any more in which people suddenly burst into song.

It’s followed by Forster stating that many of the people who come to see him declare the next number to be among their favourites. There’s an arched eyebrow. The song is I Love Myself And I Always Have.

The Swedish Band are wonderful, their youth lending new perspectives to some songs, but the respect they give them always remains at the forefront.

From the new album we also get Good To Cry, the fabulous Breakfast On A Train, Tell It Back To Me, All Of The Time and an emotive solo performance of Foolish I Know that allows me to use the ‘sending shivers up my spine’ cliche.

We are presented with wonderful versions of the GBs’ Draining The Pool For You, Love Is A Sign and a raucously wonderful People Say. Oh, and yes, Spring Rain, as good as it was when I was 18.

They return for two encores and end with a singalonga Surfing Magazines, an absolute belter of a closer that has worshippers out of their seats/pews.

Robert seems genuinely moved and it’s clear his band are loving this. It strikes me that, appropriately, given the venue, he has the slightly other-worldly presence of a minister. One of his albums is called The Evangelist, you know…

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Andrew Mosley and Robert Forster Tickets
• Mozza’s 1st novel The Choreography Of Ghosts is recently published and you can read more about him on his website and buy it here.
• Have you seen a gig by Robert Forster before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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