Customer Reviews

Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Liberty Belle is the Go-Betweens at their brittle, brilliant best. It hosts great songs with wonderful melodies, strings and an edginess that set them apart from their contemporaries. Take the time to grow to love these songs and you will be rewarded with an eclectic masterpiece forever close to your CD player.

My house creaks under the groaning mass of vinyl inside , but if a fire broke out and I could grab just one record on my way out , no question this would be it. This is the soundtrack to my life. Every track is perfect and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Revolver , Hunky Dory , OK Computer ....Bow Down.

If it wasn't for the movie Kingpin (Spring Rain is in the soundtrack), I would have never heard of the Go-Betweens and that would have been unfortunate. The title of my review refers both to the band and to the sales of this album. Spring Rain is my favorite track and I can listen to it over and over. The tune is catchy and Lindy Morrison's drums are infectious. This is an album that you tend to like more after each listening. The first time I heard it, the tracks I really liked were Spring Rain, The Ghost and the Black Hat, and In the Core of a Flame. The Ghost and the Black Hat is a really happy sounding song about an unhappy subject. If I had been managing the Go-Betweens in the 1980's, I would have changed the title of In the Core of a Flame to "The Right Word" and released it as a single. After more listenings, I really started to like To Reach Me and Head Full of Steam. Some of the lyrics and vocals are what I would call unconventional. At times, it seems that they try to cram too many words into a phrase such as "Her mother works in exports, but that's of no importance of all." This album is different from what is usually played on the radio and that is a good thing. I'm just sorry that I didn't hear of this album when it was new.

this, along with 16 Lovers Lane, is the amazing Go-betweens best album and therefor also one of the most brilliant albums ever. It's amazing how forgotten they are, damn shame if you ask me.....buy it!....

A somewhat difficult but ultimately rewarding proposition, like all of the Go-Betweens' best work: most of the songs on "Liberty Belle" feel slightly clumsy and pretentious at first, but reveal a subtle propulsiveness, grandeur, and beauty after repeated listenings that few other bands of the era could match. The exception is the rollicking, immediate "Apology Accepted," which captures the joy and fear of reuniting with an old lover perfectly.

Some ppl think that this is the greatest collection of songs ever compiled on one cd. After hearing it, it is hard to disagree. But even if it is not the best, once you have heard it, you will want to keep this on your cd player. When will change come, just like spring rain.

You read about a lot of namechecked artists from the past who were adventurous or exciting or groundbreaking, but after you've heard all the bands who have namechecked them (and copied them) the original band just doesn't seem so exciting when YOU actually get around to listening to them. Big Star comes to mind, so I would argue REM's entire catalog (they've done LOTS of tremendous work, but I'm not of the worship EVERYTHING from the IRS era cult) also does. And while Big Star and REM (and especially REM) have tons of great songs, you still kind of wonder what all the fuss was about from that crazy record store worker, for instance in the case of Third/Sister Lovers and Murmur. Well, like Television's "Marquee Moon" and Joy Division's catalog, the Go-Betweens and especially "Liberty Belle" live up to its lore and far justify it. From the country-western opening of Spring Rain to Apology Accepted its tons of brilliant but subtle songwriting and probably "all that is good about the 80's" music. Which means people that consider themselves 80's types probably won't like it but if you ever liked the Husker's or the Jesus and Mary Chain you'll probably appreciate this different but nonetheless style of good music. Intelligent but not wimpy, and in this age of Radiohead I'd argue thats NOT a bad thing.

Out of the staggeringly original and beautiful body of work the Go-Betweens released, Liberty Belle stands as my favorite. Capturing the band in peak form, Liberty Belle displays in spades Robert Forster and Grant McLennan's knack for creating catchy, distinctive, adventurous, and deeply moving pop tunes. Both singer/guitarist/songwriters are writing to their strengths here, resulting in a highly consistent and cohesive album.

The songs are first rate. Hooks and melodies abound, both infectiously catchy and attractively understated. Forster and McLennan's jangly acoustic and shimmery electric guitars (along with Robert Vickers' thoughtfully melodic bass) interweave beautifully to create harmonically rich but deceptively simple melodies. Further fleshing out each song's melodic potential are the sophisticated and often spine-tingling arrangements of multi-instrumentalist Dean B. Speedwell (aka Dean Broderick). In fact, it's Speedwell's versatile touch that lends the record so much of its alluring texture and charm: accordion on "The Ghost and the Black Hat," ghostly vibes on the gossamer, jazzy haze of "Twin Layers of Lightning" (one of Forster's best songs ever), deeply affecting string arrangements on "Bow Down" and "The Wrong Road," and rich, burbling Hammond organ pops up in several places. This mesmerizing combination of shimmering guitar melodies and complex, sometimes dramatic non-rock arrangements approaches the sophisticated sound of baroque pop bands like the Left Banke or Love.

The overall sound of the album is full, lush, organic, yet NOT polished or slick. It's got a touch of roughness around the edges, with the occasional jagged guitar part and drumming with a feel that defies click tracks. Save for a slightly jarring reverb effect on the drums, this suits the songs perfectly, giving them a more timeless quality, sans the aggressively 80s-styled production that plagued so many other albums from this period.

Liberty Belle maintains interest by remaining marvelously diverse. Alongside moodier, melancholy numbers like "Twin Layers" and "Bow Down," you've got infectious, upbeat, pop gems like the Forster-penned single "Head Full of Steam" and McLennan's swirling "Palm Sunday." Despite the varying moods and tempos, the songs work together wonderfully as a whole.

Lyrically, Forster and McLennan are in top form, exuding heartfelt, often ironic sentiments on adult feelings and situations. Dripping with sincerity, Forster pulls out lines like "These people are excited by their cars/I want surprises, just like spring rain" (from "Spring Rain"), while McLennan deftly melds dark imagery with upbeat lightness when he sings jauntily, "The grave-digger's work is almost done/a hole in the ground spits dirt at the sun" in "The Ghost and the Black Hat." Forster and McLennan display a mature poetic skill that is all too rare in much of today's pop music.

I can't recommend Liberty Belle enough, and it's the perfect place to start for neophytes. A must for anyone into new wave guitar-pop like the Smiths, Felt, early REM, Aztec Camera, etc.

Probably their most accessible album, I first discovered the GBs when the above song dented the British charts. This album should have 'broke' them into the wider world, but it seems that as they can never be pigeonholed, they've always had problems with gaining more than 'critical' success.

These songs are well-crafted, though sometimes quite melancholy. It can 'get' you emotionally and that's where their strength lies.

If you haven't discovered them before, its never too late ...

While I depart from the view, voiced by many GB fans, that this is their best record, I still think it ranks pretty high up there in the "canon"...This marks the point where they really started to beef up and "lush up" their production...before this, things were pretty barebones. And, in their next disc, "Tallulah" they fully reaped all the benefits of this approach..

On this disc (their fourth best? not that anyone's counting, but I'd place it behind Tallulah, Lovers Lane and Oceans Apart) the songwritings highlights are far too numerous to mention...having said that, "Spring Rain", one of RF's indisputable best, is contained herein..."Head Full of Steam", "Bow Down", "Twin Layers of Lightning" and "Apology Accepted" are all also great, moving, and beautiful (and any other encomiums you care to add)...

What it is all about, at the end of the day, is songwriting, and that is the GBs strong suit and what keeps the fans coming back...

As for the reviewers below who don't get it, well, they just don't get it. Sorry their songwriting isn't more scientifically up to date and torn from today's headlines - whattaya want them to sing about, the Genome Project? Me, I like songs about ghosts...