Rocktrospectiva: The Melancholic "Spring Hill Fair" Turns 40

 

Released on 27 September 1984, "Spring Hill Fair" was The Go-Betweens third studio album and the first real attempt to stardom, the band now quartet thanks Robert Vickers joined the band and this enable Grant McLennan to lead guitar, the album spawned two singles "Part Company" and "Bachelor Kisses". 

 

Named after an annual fair in Spring Hill, Queensland, suburb of Brisbane Grammar School, Robert Forster's high school. Some of the band had also lived there in the early eighties. Grant McLennan said of the title, "It was generally not that we were home sick, I think we just wanted to have, In another interview McLennan stated "we all lived there and the main reason was that in September, October of every year in Brisbane, there is, in Spring Hill, a fair, and as the album came out around then we thought it would be nice to have a parochial mention in a title because we hadn't done that for a long time." 

 

McLennan and Forster later said that they were uninspired and felt the songs on their previous album had been better. They were also unhappy with the production, despite using the same producer as on Before Hollywood. McLennan said, "John Brand, the producer, he did change between the second and third, which we did as well, but he went and made a very produced 1984 English pop record.

 

According to band, recording in France was much more expensive than their earlier recordings, with the Miraval studio booked for a month. Forster recalls that the band initially thought that they would set up and play in the recording studio in a similar way to how they had recorded previously. About half the tracks had programmed rhythm tracks, leading to conflict between the producer Brand and drummer Lindy Morrison.

 

Morrison claimed the relationship had also soured after Brand attempted to seduce her and was rebuffed on their first day in the studio. Brand spent the first week trying to gate the drums and set click tracks with the rest of the band feeling trapped. Furthermore, Morrison recalled the relationships within the band were poor. "They were fucked. There were little power struggles going on all over the place. We were a neurotic mess.

 

About the lyrics on this album, Forster said: I wrote when I've been drinking. I wanted to speak a lot more directly and I wanted to speak about certain topics in a very straightforward way. And the best way I found of doing that was by sitting down and drinking. A conversational-type lyric. Most of the lyrics I've done on that album were started at night. I'd start drinking, smoking cigarettes, and I'd write all the lyrics in one sitting. I think it shows.

 

The album opened with the brilliant "Bachelor Kisses" the band's first real attempt at a commercial single,  a brilliant melodic tune that despite all the bad vibe and the awful video, the single is considered one of the best tracks ever recorded by the band, "Five Words", is one of the set most-defiant tunes with McLennan and Forster joining voices in their best way possible creating an imperfect and heartbreaking tune, "Part Company" was the counterpart of "Bachelor Kisses" it was the first single to released but failed to make an impact on the charts, the raw "River Of Money" sound like the band joined forces with John Cale and the rest of the Velvet Underground, the band's darkest way to sound, a remarkable lead guitar solo on "You Never Lived" was another plus for the album.

 

The critics were fairly mixed, some considered the album a a disappointing and disjointed record, on the other hand, the album is considered a classic on the band's career with a relentless beauty and also one of the band's most underrated album alongside with Tallulah. 

 

Spring Hill Fair Track List: 

 

1. Bachelor Kisses

2. Five Words

3. The Old Way Out

4. You've Never Lived

5. Part Company

6. Slow Slow Music

7. Draining The Pool For You

8. River Of Money

9. Unkind And Unwise 

10. Man O'Sand To Girl O'Sea