The Candle & The Flame – Robert Forster

Robert Forster is well known as, together with Grant McLennan, one of the founding members of The Go-Betweens. Together with Grant McLennan, he was responsible for some of the finest songs in Australian rock and pop. Forster specialised in literate, wry, lyricism dealing with often obscure topics from Lee Remick to Surfing Magazines and German Farmhouses. Those songs were, for the most part delivered with spritely jangling guitars which earnt the description of ‘that striped sunlight sound’.

Those well honed skills have served Forster well with the Go-Betweens, and onward through his solo career. But never have those skills been quite so critical to an album’s success than on his 2023 release ‘The Candle and The Flame’ – an album of ruminations on his wife Karin Baumler’s battle with cancer. Not since his solo debut Danger in the Past in 1990 has Forster delivered an album this focussed and compelling.

The topic of cancer could, in lesser hands, make for heavy going, but, infused with that striped sunlight sound, wry lyricism and with backing by family members Karin, son Louis and daughter Loretta (together with sometime Go-Between Adele Pickvance) these tracks are light, bright and uplifting while never skirting the realities of Baumler’s illness. It’s a masterful trick and one which elevates this album to a state of grace, hope, celebration and most compellingly a (sacharine-free) tribute to the power of love.

Opener, She’s a Fighter makes do with a mere 5 words (She’s a Fighter, Fighting for good). It was taped live with Forster, Karen, Louis and Loretta arranged in a circle playing this mantra over a propulsive tune similar to the great train songs beloved by blues players past and a neat finger picked riff which imbues the song with strength, determination and hope.

It’s followed by ‘Tender Years’, a reminisence on Forster’s relationship with Baumler through the years, which speaks to the depth of love and partnership fortified by shared experience, time and memory, together with fear that it may soon end:

‘I know it’s growing daily, lately I see how far we’ve come/I’m in a story with her, I know I can’t live without her/ I just can’t imagine one’.

It’s the best track on the album and the equal of anything Forster has written.

The other high point of the album comes on the first track of Side Two in the form of ‘I Don’t Do Drugs, I Do Time’ which melds memories, perspective and precious time into a joint declaration by Forster and Baume (sharing vocals) that, together they will make the most of every moment they have together: ‘I don’t do drugs, I do time/ Make it stop and rewind/ Reimagine, redefine/ Recondition, realign/ Reelected, not resigned/ I don’t do drugs/ Baby, I do time’.

That Forster has managed to make an album, dealing this honestly with his wife’s cancer, which is beautiful, joyous and uplifting is a minor miracle. That he’s done it as a family project brings an added depth, honesty and more than a little magic.