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Robert Forster

A beautiful, confident solo debut. Gideon Coe, BBC 6 Music

“I don’t know when first met Pete. Well, I do. He’d met us… on the 16 Lovers Lane tour. He was interviewing Lindy, and I walked in. In Birmingham. So, I had met him when he was a teenager. And then we started to talk, I think it was in mid-2016, something like that. I started to do radio stations. That’s right. He was on Soho Radio.

And we just hit it off amazing. He was someone I could talk to and someone I find fascinating. He’s always got a very unique way of looking at things, Pete. And then he set up this label and he asked me, and they were really going to do it well. I was thrilled that [Danger In The Past] was gonna get a second life. I was very happy it got reissued, very happy. And Calling from a Country Phone and Beautiful Hearts and Warm Nights. Very, very happy. They jump out of the ’90s and suddenly here we are in 2024, and they’re there again in beautiful packaging. The remastering was done at Abbey Road. It’s all quality all the way, and I’m very, very happy about it.”

Robert Forster, as quoted in Patrick Chapman’s 33⅓ book Danger In The Past

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/robert-forsters-danger-in-the-past-9798765128107/

Danger In The Past

NEMYLP004 | NEMYCD004

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DANGER IN THE PAST – CD

BABY STONES
THE RIVER PEOPLE
LEAVE HERE SATISFIED
HEART OUT TO TENDER
IS THIS WHAT YOU CALL CHANGE
DEAR BLACK DREAM
DANGER IN THE PAST
I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR SOMEBODY
JUSTICE
HIDDEN CD BONUS TRACKS

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT
FALLING STAR

LP
SIDE ONE

BABY STONES
THE RIVER PEOPLE
LEAVE HERE SATISFIED
HEART OUT TO TENDER
IS THIS WHAT YOU CALL CHANGE
SIDE TWO

DEAR BLACK DREAM
DANGER IN THE PAST
I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR SOMEBODY
JUSTICE

7″
SIDE A

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT
SIDE B

FALLING STAR

Calling From A Country Phone

NEMYLP005 | NEMYCD005

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CALLING FROM A COUNTRY PHONE – LP

SIDE ONE

ATLANTA LIE LOW
121
THE CIRCLE
FALLING STAR
I WANT TO BE QUIET
CAT’S LIFE

SIDE TWO

GIRL TO A WORLD
DROP
BEYOND THEIR LAW
FOREVER & TIME

7″
SIDE A

LONELY BOY
SIDE B

BROOKFIELD 1975

CALLING FROM A COUNTRY PHONE – CD

ATLANTA LIE LOW
121
THE CIRCLE
FALLING STAR
I WANT TO BE QUIET
CAT’S LIFE
GIRL TO A WORLD
DROP
BEYOND THEIR LAW
FOREVER & TIME
HIDDEN CD BONUS TRACK

LONELY BOY
BROOKFIELD 1975

Beautiful Hearts

NEMYLP014 | NEMYCD014

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LP
SIDE ONE

NATURE’S WAY
BROKEN HEARTED PEOPLE (GUY CLARK)
ECHO BEACH (MARTHA & THE MUFFINS)
TELL ME THAT IT ISN’T TRUE (BOB DYLAN)
2541 (GRANT HART)
ANYTIME”(RICK NELSON)
SIDE TWO

LOCKED AWAY
LOOK OUT (HERE COMES TOMORROW (THE MONKEES)
ALONE (HEART)
BIRD (MICHAEL HANSONIS)
FRISCO DEPOT (MICKEY NEWBURY)
3 A.M.” (BILL ANDERSON)

7″
SIDE A

THE LADY DON’T MIND (TALKING HEADS)
SIDE B

FREDDY FENDERS SOHN (F.S.K.)

BEAUTIFUL HEARTS – CD


NATURE’S WAY
BROKEN HEARTED PEOPLE (GUY CLARK)
ECHO BEACH (MARTHA & THE MUFFINS)
TELL ME THAT IT ISN’T TRUE (BOB DYLAN)
2541 (GRANT HART)
ANYTIME (RICK NELSON)
LOCKED AWAY
LOOK OUT (HERE COMES TOMORROW (THE MONKEES)
ALONE (HEART)
BIRD (MICHAEL HANSONIS)
FRISCO DEPOT (MICKEY NEWBURY)

NEMYLP013 | NEMYCD013

WARM NIGHTS

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LP

SIDE ONE

I CAN DO
WARM NIGHTS
CRYIN’ LOVE
SNAKE SKIN LADY
LONELINESS
SIDE TWO

JUG OF WINE
FORTRESS
HALF THE WAY HOME
ON A STREET CORNER
I’LL JUMP
Bonus 7″

DID YOU END UP WITH THE ONE YOU LOVE?
ROCK ’N’ ROLL FRIEND
HYPNOTISED
FORTRESS (ORIGINAL ALBUM VERSION)

WARM NIGHTS – CD

NEMYCD013
I CAN DO
WARM NIGHTS
CRYIN’ LOVE
SNAKE SKIN LADY
LONELINESS
JUG OF WINE
FORTRESS
HALF THE WAY HOME
ON A STREET CORNER
I’LL JUMP
3 A.M. (BILL ANDERSON)

The remastering (from Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios) has dramatically revealed a depth and physicality to these recordings that casts new light on Robert’s intentions for these records.

Pete Paphides

2020 sees the thirtieth anniversary of the album that launched the solo career of sometime Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster. Upon its release ‘Danger In The Past’ met with universal acclaim from critics, even drawing comparison with Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’ in some quarters. To mark this milestone, Needle Mythology Records will be reissuing expanded versions of both Danger In The Past and its 1992 successor Calling From A Country Phone.

The re-release of these albums comes on the back of an incredible 2019 for Forster, in which he released an acclaimed studio album Inferno and received unanimous five star reviews for G Is For Go-Betweens Vol. 2, the second in a trilogy of box-sets gathering Go-Betweens studio albums and previously unreleased live recordings and outtakes.

Forster himself has been fully involved on this expanded reissue contributing new liner notes and newly unearthed photographs.

For Danger In The Past, Robert recorded in Berlin with an illustrious ensemble that included Bad Seeds alumni Mick Harvey (producer, multi-instrumentalist), Hugo Race (guitar) and Thomas Wydler (drums).

 

Listening now, I am struck by its boldness and beauty – we really did go out on a limb.

Robert Forster

2020 sees the thirtieth anniversary of the album that launched the solo career of sometime Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster. To mark this milestone, Needle Mythology Records will be reissuing expanded versions of both Danger In The Past and its 1992 successor Calling From A Country Phone.

The re-release of these albums comes on the back of an incredible 2019 for Forster, in which he released an acclaimed studio album Inferno and received unanimous five star reviews for G Is For Go-Betweens Vol. 2, the second in a trilogy of box-sets gathering Go-Betweens studio albums and previously unreleased live recordings and outtakes.

Originally released in 1993 on Beggars Banquet records, ‘Calling From A Country Phone’ has been remastered at Abbey Road, repackaged and reissued by Needle Mythology with brand new artwork featuring previously unseen photographs. The album also features brand new liner notes written by Robert Forster.

Calling From A Country Phone saw Robert return to Brisbane, working in the same studio where some of the earliest Go-Betweens recordings took place. In the words of music writer and author Andrew Mueller, the album comes as “a twinkling rebuke to any prejudice that wintry elegies to ebbing hope and deadpan surf-rock need be mutually exclusive propositions.”

The remastering [by Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios] has dramatically revealed a depth and physicality to these re-cordings that casts new light on Robert’s intentions for these records. Calling From A Country Phone, in particular, is a revelation. It’s as though an invisible membrane between listener and songs has been removed

Pete Paphide

Soon after I named the album, I was dissatisfied with its title. Kicking myself that I hadn’t kept with the album’s working title Beautiful Hearts (much more fitting for an album of other people’s songs). The remaster has allowed me to restore the record to its original working title.

Robert Forster

Originally entitled I Had A New York Girlfriend, Beautiful Hearts was Robert’s first and, to date, only album of other people’s songs. Originally released in 1994, the album saw Robert tackle a diverse array of favourite songs – among them Mickey Newbury’s Frisco Depot, Martha & The Muffins’ Echo Beach, Alone by Heart and Guy Clark’s Broken-Hearted People.

Although intensely beloved of his fans, the album has never seen a vinyl release until now. Having had three decades to reflect on the record, Robert took this chance to revisit the album’s title and artwork. I Had A New York Girlfriend had been an eleventh-hour decision, a line taken from the Modern Lovers song Old World. The working title had always been Beautiful Hearts, a phrase borrowed from another song, For Those by Tindersticks. With the old title gone, the artwork – a New York street scene – no longer made sense. “So, in its place,” explains Robert, “comes a contemporaneous photograph of me conducting a set of musicians crashing into the album’s opening cut Nature’s Way. Well… that’s the fantasy.”

Back in 1994, Beautiful Hearts had been a decision undertaken by Robert in part to buy him time. He had found himself in a song drought, but he had read enough about the travails of songwriters in trouble to know that, sometimes, an album of other people’s material can often move artists to a place where the songs start to come again.

And so, it came to be… Warm Nights

 

Edwyn Collins got the [intended] sound of the album completely – a dry low-end groove pitched somewhere between Creedence Clearwater Revival and Willie Mitchell’s early ’70s Hi Records work.”

Robert Forster

Recorded a year after Beautiful Hearts, Warm Nights repositioned Robert’s standing as one of the great songwriters of the post-punk era. It was only towards the end of the sessions that some complications arose – and it’s these complications that Robert has seized the chance to remedy for this new release of the album.

“It was Edwyn’s idea,” explains Robert, “to bring in a three-piece brass section – it fitted some of the songs beautifully, but it was in the mixing of the brass and the effect it had on the running order that things got complicated, [resulting in] two changes to the album that have been bugging me for 25 years.”

Finally, Robert can sleep easy. The horns removed from Fortress have now been restored – brass that’s also present on Half The Way Home, a song that Robert rashly demoted from the album, making it a bonus track on the Cryin’ Love” single.

Finally, Half The Way Home assumes its rightful place on Warm Nights, replacing Rock’n’Roll Friend – itself a Go-Betweens b-side that had slipped onto Warm Nights on account of its presence in the Australian live shows that had immediately preceded the album’s recording sessions.

During the playback of the original reels from the Edwyn Collins West Heath recording sessions for the album, the Needle Mythology team discovered a beautiful, hitherto forgotten song Did You End Up With The One You Love?. This track was subsequently mixed by Bernard Butler and now appears 28 years later on the bonus 7” and digital versions of Warm Nights.

Complementing the revised iteration of Warm Nights is an EP featuring the original album version of Fortress, Rock ’n’ Roll Friend, Hypnotized (originally the second extra track on the Cryin’ Love CD single) and Did You End Up With The One You Love? .

The album comes in a gatefold sleeves with printed inners featuring newly written liner notes by Forster. The 7″ single is housed in a full colour die-cut sleeve. Now a celebrated artist in her native Germany, Leni Hoffman flew to the UK to personally oversee the printing of the original artwork she created back in 1995.