16 Lovers Lane: The Go-Betweens - 1988

Australian Pressing, 1988.
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Like pretty much everyone else, unfortunately for the band, I liked The Go-Betweens in the 1980s, but never bought their records. I have a reasonably good excuse however, I was a poor teenager with not much jangling around in my pockets to buy that many records. I didn’t really connect with them in a serious way again until 2015 when I bought G Stands for Go-Betweens: Vol.1, a box set of their first three albums plus EPs and rarities. How I fell for them, swooning into their literary pop-rock pretense. 16 Lovers Lane is one of their greatest achievements and one of the great melodic pop-rock albums, period. It contains two of my favourite Go-Betweens songs, Grant McLennan’s confessional Quiet Heart (which is also my partner’s favourite song of theirs) and Robert Forster’s plaintive Dive for Your Memory. I was always a sucker for melancholy.

I’m pretty sure that I bought this second hand album in Melbourne from Dixon’s Recycled Records in Fitzroy, from the look of the price sticker, maybe in the early 2000s. Every record stores’ price sticker is like a finger-print. You’ll notice that the majority of my records have the price sticker on the inside of the record sleeve, as a permanent reminder of how much I paid for it and where I bought it from, which is all part of the history of that record.

Far Away Trains Passing By: Ulrich Schnauss - 2001

European Pressing, 2020.
Earl Collection 00006

I first heard this album around the time it was released in 2001, courtesy of a friend who had a hard to get vinyl copy. God knows how many were pressed up back then when only nostalgia addled geezers like me and the electronic music/DJ community were keeping vinyl going - barely any I’d say. I loved the yearning, sun dappled down-beat flow of this record so much I went to the trouble of actually getting it burned from the vinyl directly onto a CD. Over the years whenever I played the CD I wished I had a copy on vinyl. Literally earlier today, at Diabolik Records, I had one of those cherished moments in a record store when you spy that certain album and you feel an up-swell of joy knowing that it is finally yours. Remastered and pressed up beautifully, this version of Far Away Trains Passing By contains nine bonus tracks, worth every cent of the indulgent $80 price tag.

This album evokes such a sense of tender melancholy within me; whenever played, including today, it always reminds me of that special feeling of being alone, late at night and cocooned in the house with nothing demanding your attention and no one to bother you, just a gentle drift into the soft night. Beautiful...