- I Can Do

- Warm Nights

- Cryin' Love

- Snake Skin Lady

- Loneliness

- Jug of Wine

- Fortress

- Rock-n-Roll Friend

- On A Street Corner

- I'll Jump

Robert Forster's latest album opens, in typically wry style, with the line "This is something that I can do ..." In fact, over the last fifteen years or so, the critical consensus has been that songwriting is something that Robert Forster does better that almost anybody else - but then arch understatement has always been another one of his talents.

When the six original Go-Betweens LPs were remastered and reissued earlier this year, they set off yet another avalanche of praise in the music press - and a fresh batch of wondering, too. Why were The Go-Betweens never as big as REM ? Why was Robert Forster never as worshipped as Morrissey ? Maybe it's because the melodies were too precious, the chord changes too lethally sad, the lyrics too penetrating or too oblique - the songs too good - to be debased into common currency.

Whatever. Robert Forster acknowledged with the title of his first solo album the Danger In The Past, and it's not as if the present is short of pleasures. There's a new Robert Forster album for a start - his first collection of original material since 1993's Calling From A Country Phone, although the silence was punctuated in 1994 by an idiosyncratic collection of cover versions called I Had A New York Girlfriend. All these records have received the customary acclaim, and been clasped to the breasts of the people who know the secret, and the same thing will happen toWarm Nights.

For Warm Nights Robert has donned once more his medallion and his alligator shoes, and, with the able assistance of Edwyn Collins, ventured back onto the emotional battlefield. There's the soaring passion of "Cryin' Love", the muted "Redondo Beach"-esque wistfulness of "Jug Of Wine", the rambling folk-rock of "Rock ' N ' Roll Friend" (a song with a tangled history - an early version was released by the Go-Betweens) and, Robert being Robert, the Bavarian neo-polka of "Fortress". As usual, impassioned vocals and shards of poetic insight are to be found in abundance. As usual, in fact, it's brilliant.

The first taste of Warm Nights was the slow-building, showstopping single "Cryin' Love", which also featured two tracks not included on the album. Robert recently appeared at The Garage in London, an emotional occasion which was described in the NME thus : "Robert treats us to his latest collection of utterly brilliant songs, from the Warm Nights album ... "Cryin' Love", "Warm Nights" and "Snake Skin Lady" overflow with the bottleneck charm and the subtly nagging melodies that most mortals barely achieve once, let alone all the bloody time."

- Nature's Way-------------------

- Broken hearted people

- Echo beach

- Tell me that it isn't true

- 2541

- Anytime

- Locked away

- Look out here comes tomorrow

- Alone

- Bird

- Frisco depot

- 3 am

- Atlanta Lie Low

- 121

- The Circle

- Falling Star

- I Want To Be Quiet

- Cats Life

- Girl To a World

- Drop

- Beyond Their Law

- Forever & Time

- Baby Stones

- The River People

- Leave Here Satisfied

- Heart Out To Tender

- Is This What You Call Change

- Dear Black Dream

- Danger in the Past

- I've Been Looking for Somebody

- Justice

CD: Drop / Falling Star / Baby Stones / Brookfield 1975 (Beggars Banquet BBQ 13 CD - 1993)

CD: 2541 / 3am / Freddy Fender's Sohn / Danger In The Past (live) (Beggars Banquet BBQ 38 CD - 1994)

CD: Cryin' Love / Half The Way Home / Hypnotized (Beggars Banquet BEG 300 CD - June 1996)

CD: I Can Do / Rock 'n' Roll Friend (Beggars Banquet WARM 1 CD - promo only, Sept.1996)

COMPILATION: Tower Of Song on "I'm Your Fan - The Songs Of Leonard Cohen" (East West, 1991)

Interview featuring Grant McLennan and Robert Forster.

Link to another Robert Forster site.