“Part of me loves to fail,” notes Robert Forster during his eighth album co-fronting The Go-Betweens. The tension between starlust and negligible sales was always one of the most poignant aspects of this marvellous band: Since their reunion in 2000, however, Forster and Grant McLennan have seemed more realistic, even though that year’s The Friends Of Rachel Worth enjoyed wider acclaim than most of its predecessors.

Bright Yellow Bright Orange (loyalists will observe the trademark double ‘I’ in the title) is more reflective still. Forster and McLennan each contribute five songs, but it’s the latter’s elegiac tone which dominates, his knack of using romantic language without resorting to clich