**** The Go-Betweens

BELLAVISTA TERRACE: THE BEST OF THE GO-BETWEENS

(Beggars Banquet)

What can you say about this superb 14-track best-of that would better Robert Forster's own liner notes, the most painfully honest career summation since the LA punk/funk band God and the State brutally critiqued themselves on the cover of their album Ruins: The Complete Works. Forster, who shares the singer/songwriter duties with Grant McLennan in the recently reunited Australia chamber-pop outfit, admits it's not really a greatest hits 'cause the Go-Betweens "didn't have any hits"; didn't have a label that promoted them worth a damn; didn't have "foot-stomping, air-punching standout things"; and were utterly out of step with the "greedy, money-making excess" of the '80s.

Ten years after the fact, they finally hooked up with a label that revels in their refusal to equate young with loud and snotty. Beggars even hired a calligrapher to design an elegant new Go-Betweens logo for a six-album reissue series in 1996. This compilation provides a handy distillation of that series; it also preserves the fine Go-Betweens tradition of including two l's (as in Bellavista) in the title. Sure, it's quibble-worthy (where's the ebullient '87 love song "Right Here"?). But they were nice enough to include "Bye Bye Pride" -- the greatest song ever to mention my birthday (May 24 -- buy presents).

-- Kevin John