Rocktrospectiva: The Decent "Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express" Turns 40

 

Released on March 1986 "Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express" was the 4th., studio album by The Go-Betweens on Beggars Banquet Records, the record label that would release the remainder of the original group's LPs through their break-up in 1989. The album was recorded at Berry Street Studios in London, England, the album originally spawned two singles "Spring Rain" & "Head Full Of Steam".

The original release consisted of ten songs. The UK CD release in 1986 (BEGA 72) had the original ten tracks, plus two bonus tracks: "The Life At Hand" and "Little Joe". In 2004, LO-MAX Records released an expanded CD which included a second disc of eleven bonus tracks and music videos for the songs "Spring Rain" and "Head Full of Steam" (Single Version).

The band had signed a deal with an English branch of the label Elektra, which closed two weeks into the album's recording. The Go-Betweens' co-founder Robert Forster said, "Elektra pays for the record and doesn't even know it. We've got an album that's ours, we can sell it to anyone. Free album." Soon after, they signed with Beggars Banquet. The drummer Lindy Morrison later said, "This is my favourite album. This is a really, really fabulous album. We produced this ourselves and it's got the best songs, and I think every single song is a classic. And if we had produced those songs the way radio demands – like, if we'd used drum machines and just had synthesisers do most of the stuff – I think we could have got a hit.

The band entered the studio determined to create the album they envisioned. Forster later wrote, "If this was to be our last shot, it had to be on our terms. There'd be no drum machines, no piecemeal recording, no acquiescence to higher authority. Our intention was to expand on the crisp, woody sound of Before Hollywood, to include a grander, more exotic range of instrumentation." Both Grant McLennan and Forster praised the contributions of Dean B. Speedwell. McLennan said, "We used another person on that record, like we had on Before Hollywood, a kind of keyboard-y dude called Dean B. Speedwell, and he was such a musician that we could say 'Well, we want vibes like Lionel Hampton' and he could do it, or we wanted a bassoon part and he could play it."

Later McLennan said, "There was quite a fundamental musical change in the band towards simplification. Something we've been accused of in the past, of being almost a pop band, almost an art band, you know, now we're simplifying. Thinking more of 4/4." Similarly. Forster claimed to have had a revelation in the wake of Spring Hill Fair. He said, "I'm writing a lot less complicated music, and it's giving me space to put myself in it.

Reviews were fairly good highlighting the set of song cause its lyrics had rambling imagery, in that case the only complaint was the production that practically let the album down but alongside Spring Hill Fair this was fairly their best album, and also that the lighter sound can be partly attributed to the growing influence of co-leader Grant McLennan a totally landscape of organic, homespun, with echoes of Australian country in its classicist rock novellas".

 

Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express Track List: 

 

1. Spring Rain

2. The Ghost And The Black Hat 

3. The Wrong Road

4. To Reach Me

5. Twin Layers Of Lightning

6. In The Core OF A Flame

7. Head Full Of Steam

8. Bow Down

9. Palm Sunday (On Board The SS Within)

10. Apology Accepted

11. Spring Rain 

12. Head Full Of Steam