Album Anniversary: Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express

The 1986 masterpiece by the Go-Betweens that you never heard

Apr 07, 2026

Welcome back Hi-Fiers,

The legends that never were. Another band, virtually invisible to the US market, audiences, and listeners. Absent from radio and MTV, I never saw or heard them, or of them, on US radio or TV. I was an avid scavenger of anything underground, different, scouring the British magazines. Yet their DNA is everywhere in college music radio, in every indie rock/post-punk band from The Replacements, to REM, to Sleater-Kinney, to Modest Mouse, to Death Cab for Cutie.

Their story is a Shakespearean tragedy. There were two (maybe three) love stories going on at the same time that ripped the band apart at the end. There was drug abuse and the tragic, untimely death of one of the songwriters. I mean, this should be enough to put them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or at least get them more recognition than they do.

The band was Australian, and in the end, it was only Australia that gave them some due, albeit posthumously.

A Partnership Beyond Time

Some artists transcend their geography. Can’t be compared to their peers in the music scene. They are the bands that fall through the cracks. But they are also the bands or artists revered and adored by all the successful or more famous songwriters, artists of the time. Their music is picked apart, their lyrics dissected, and mined to provide inspiration or influence to legions of musicians and writers all over the world.

That band is the Go-Betweens. Australian by birth and blood, but that’s where it starts and ends. They are a timeless band, who could exist in any era or period, or century for that matter.

Most bands wear their influences openly. You can trace the lineage, connect the dots, hear what came before. But with the Go-Betweens, you can’t. Robert Forster and Grant McLennan belonged to a different era entirely. Could have been Renaissance-era bards with lutes as much as folk singers in the ‘60s. In separate interviews they’ve only clearly named the Beatles as an influence, but were careful not to name anyone else or draw any comparisons.

Now, peers and music lovers and critics and even music historians call Forster and McLennan the indie Lennon and McCartney. Not for the fame, not for the hits; they never had those. But for the partnership itself. Two childhood friends with acoustic guitars, writing obtuse lyrics, stronger together than apart. A brotherhood that lasted as long as either of them was alive. When Grant died suddenly of a heart attack in 2006, the partnership died. The band died. Irrevocably.

Building the Sound

Starting out as a trio, after one drummer didn’t work out in the beginning, they made a conscious effort to find a female. They recognized the toxic masculinity of the rock and punk scenes at the time, and felt that even their sound needed some diversity. Enter Lindy Morrison. A very talented and artistic drummer, who at times lent her backing vocals. But more importantly, laid down some of the most complicated time signatures and beats. You have to listen carefully and closely, and some of those time signatures can only be heard in prog rock bands.

The story of the Go-Betweens is mostly the story of a duo, of a songwriting partnership. They both wrote lyrics, they both played guitar, and wrote the music too.

Robert Forster was the poet, the Bob Dylan or Lou Reed of the band. Coming up around the same time as, and friends with Nick Cave of the Birthday Party. Robert, without having a grating voice like Dylan, had a Lou Reed-like spoken word aesthetic to his singing. But also similar to Nick Cave, without the deep baritone.

Grant McLennan, on the other hand, was a bit of the McCartney of the group. Catchy hooks, more of the overt love songs, melodies, and harmonies. But their voices also worked together. Robert Forster, when he wanted to, could harmonize with Grant.

They just didn’t follow any template, and by doing so, sounded like no other post-punk, synthpop, or new wave act. For that matter, they sounded like no other Australian act. Not as hard-as-nails or political as Midnight Oil. Nor the rock/sex/god aesthetic of INXS, trying to ride a tsunami to stardom. Nor even the harder punk or goth of Birthday Party or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. They mainly played acoustic guitars, but they weren’t folk. Their electric guitars weren’t distorted, so they never “rocked hard.” Though there was a punk sensibility, they didn’t grandstand with complex lead guitar lines. It was more beautiful, little simple riffs and melodies.

My Accidental Discovery

I was blissfully unaware of the Go-Betweens during their most creative period. It wasn’t until after they had broken up and Grant McLennan formed a collaboration with Steve Kilbey from my favorite band, The Church. Jack Frost. When I listened to Grant’s amazing songwriting and music, I learned about the Go-Betweens.

It was more of an archaeological dig, and archival research into the greatest indie band I never knew about. Almost like discovering the Velvet Underground, and just as impactful.

There were other albums and songs that I loved or started listening to. Ironically, not this album that I am reviewing today.

This album slipped through the cracks completely. I am really only discovering it now, and it is quite simply a great piece of art.

Liberty Belle — The Album as Art

This isn’t a “singles album.” The album has a mood/feel/sound to it, and works cohesively as a whole. To research for this post, I just gave myself a couple hours of quiet, and pressed play. There was no desire to skip past, jump between songs. Individually, you can’t really say there is this distinct story that starts from one song and continues to another. It’s a feeling, it’s a sound. Musically, sonically, it feels like the album unfolds itself to the listener and tells a story through sound.

The video for Spring Rain, with Robert Forster on lead vocals

For this album, they had a full-time bass player and multi-instrumentalist, Robert Vickers. On many songs, a violin, or a cello, and oboe, or bassoon can be heard. String arrangements by Audrey Riley added depth and texture. Dean B. Speedwell contributed organ, piano, accordion, vibraphone, and bassoon throughout the record. It adds a deeper dimension, especially to Forster’s songs, which are abstract lyrically.

Once the album was recorded, to support the band live playing oboe, violin, and backing vocals, enter Amanda Brown. She joined the band to support live TV appearances and tour, especially at the Glastonbury Festival.

Contrast that with the actual video they produced for the song. Shows Robert Forster’s love of camp, of Bolan, Bowie and New York Dolls:

Bands like the Decemberists and Belle and Sebastian take their cue from what the Go-Betweens created with this album and expanded on in future works.

The album was recorded at Berry Street Studios in London during October and November 1985. Berry Street was a working studio in Clerkenwell that had hosted everyone from Freddie Mercury to Billy Bragg, and eventually Radiohead. In the 1980s, it was run by producer Dennis Bovell and had become known for British dub and reggae work. It wasn’t Abbey Road, but it had character and pedigree.

There’s an interesting story behind the recording: the band had signed with Elektra’s English branch, which closed two weeks into recording the album. As Robert Forster later said with characteristic dry wit, “Elektra pays for the record and doesn’t even know it.” The album was eventually released in March 1986 on Beggars Banquet Records.

Grant’s Gift for Complexity

Grant McLennan had the songs that fit more traditional pop-rock structures. Although he was the one who wrote the songs in the most peculiar time signatures. On the previous album that was “Cattle and Cane.” On this album, it is “The Ghost and the Black Hat.” The addition of the accordion really adds a nice element to it. There is also this sort of sway to the song that makes you feel like you have just walked into a pub or bar with music playing, and you come in to sit down. It has a connective but interlude feeling to it. The Church also did that on some of their early albums. When Grant collaborated with Steve Kilbey of The Church in their side band Jack Frost, they captured that same lounge feel in songs like “Geneva 4 am” and “Trapeze Boy.”

Also to be noted is Lindy Morrison’s exceptional drumming on “Cattle and Cane” and “The Ghost and the Black Hat,” changing time signatures without missing a beat and keeping those songs flowing.

The live in-studio TV performance of “Apology Accepted”, the Grant McLennan song. I like this song; it has sort of a Smiths’ melancholy to it, or even Leonard Cohen. But reading reviews of the album at the time, the critics and industry got it wrong. They described the song as upbeat, and it’s the song that gets added to the compilations. As beautiful a song as it is, that was a misstep also, the single, I believe they should have marketed for this album heavily, was “Spring Rain”.

Anyway, pay attention to the quirky beat and time signature. It’s what I love the most about Grant’s songs.

Forster’s Poetic Dreamscapes

Robert Forster, when he wanted, could do the traditional song thing. But his true strength lay in his prose and poetry. His songs were poetic dreamscapes, his delivery very Nick Cave and Nick Drake. He brought an angular, literary quality to the band's sound that balanced McLennan's melodicism perfectly.

The Cruel Paradox of Critical Acclaim

From Before Hollywood in 1983 through Liberty Belle in 1986, the Go-Betweens were on a remarkable creative trajectory. Musically and as songwriters, they were maturing, writing stronger and stronger pieces. This was their creative peak.

But commercially? They never broke through.

Here’s the paradox that defined the Go-Betweens: they played Glastonbury Festival in 1986. They recorded multiple sessions for legendary BBC DJ John Peel, whose endorsement was the gold standard for credibility. Their bootlegs got passed around amongst fans and spread the word back in the US, where college radio listeners became aware of them. They were generating loyal fans through their live performances.

Yet the industry failed them. Labels didn’t know how to promote them. Rough Trade had initially bankrolled their move to London, but then sidelined them in favor of The Smiths. Sire dropped them after Spring Hill Fair due to low sales. Elektra closed its doors two weeks into recording Liberty Belle.

The music was there. The talent was undeniable. The live performances connected. But the machinery of commercial success never engaged.

Critics loved them. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice called Forster and McLennan “the greatest songwriting partnership working today.” Mojo described Liberty Belle as “organic, homespun, with echoes of Australian country in its classicist rock novellas.” AllMusic noted how the album balanced “angularity and occasional claustrophobia” with “a new airiness and nervous romanticism.”

But critical acclaim doesn’t pay the bills or fill arenas.

Recognition, Too Late

It was only after Grant McLennan’s death in 2006 that the wider music world finally acknowledged what the devoted fans always knew. The Go-Betweens received more recognition posthumously than they ever had while making music together. Australia renamed a toll bridge in Brisbane after them. Tribute albums appeared. Music historians began placing them in the canon where they belonged.

The cruel irony: the partnership that created Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express had to end before the world would truly listen.

Legacy

As a music lover, I never tied the Go-Betweens to any sort of niche ideal or geographic location. They weren’t an “Australian” band to me. They sounded like “Alternative” acoustic/guitar-based rock. They were always a songwriter band to me. I hear The Patti Smith Group, Television, Tom Verlaine, XTC, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Nick Drake, The Replacements, Lemonheads, REM, Paul Westerberg, Billy Bragg, and John Wesley Harding.

But here’s the thing: none of those comparisons quite fit. The Go-Betweens existed outside of easy categorization, which is exactly why they fell through the commercial cracks and exactly why they matter.

Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express turns 40 this year. It deserves to be heard not as a curiosity or a cult artifact, but as what it is: a masterpiece of songwriting craft, arrangement, and vision. Two friends with acoustic guitars creating something timeless.

Give it the couple hours of quiet it deserves. Press play. Let it unfold.

Before You Go…

Thank you for reading this review.
If this piece reminded you why music still matters, please consider sharing or restacking it. This music and these stories deserve to be shared.

Missed last week?

Check out my post on the 40th Anniversary of New Order’s album Brotherhood

Leave a like and tell me in the comments:

When did you first hear the Go-Betweens, what was your favorite album? Do you have a connection with the album or any of the songs on it? First time hearing about them, give them a listen. Continue the conversation in the comments and let me know.

Hi-Fi Amateur

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