The Candle And The Flame
Robert Forster
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"Some will hear songs on the new album with titles such as It’s Only Poison (“The body is a temple/The mind is a box/Your heart is like a river that no one can stop”) and Always (“Time moves in one direction/And there’s been a breakdown at the intersection out on Highway 5”) and conclude these must have been written after Karin’s diagnosis. They weren’t. Nor was Tender Years,one of the greatest love songs Robert has written in a career that now stretches across nine studio albums with The Go-Betweens and seven solo albums of original material. The Roads is set in the countryside of Bavaria, Germany, where Karin and Robert met and lived for many years. Go Free is a song from lockdown, as is There’s A Reason To Live, inspired by the discovery of an old concert ticket in a jacket pocket. All three are saying, better times can be up ahead. I Don’t Do Drugs I Do Time is a clear-eyed observation from a mature perspective (“I remember when we first met/Where you sat and what you said”), as is the album’s closing statement, When I Was a Young Man." (Label PR)