The Go-Between

Here's some more on the death of Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens from Billboard:

[McLennan's] long time writing partner, singer Robert Forster, who co-founded the band with McLennan 30 years ago at the University of Queensland, said, "The Go-Betweens have made their final album. They have played their final show. We let it rest at that, being very proud of what we have done."

McLennan died in his sleep at his home in Brisbane's Highgate Hill from an apparent heart attack. He was 48. He had complained of being unwell while preparing for a housewarming party last Saturday.

[...]

The Go-Betweens ability to describe the Australian experience won the band enduring fans, according to Amanda Brown, who played violin and clarinet with the act in the mid-1980s.

"Grant's songs captured an Australia that was influenced by his love for contemporary American writers like Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford and Raymond Carver, and songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith," she said. "These writers inform his images of Australia, which range from the landscapes tinged with nostalgia and loss, suburban life, epic narratives and, of course, exquisite love songs."

One of McLennan's best-known songs, "Cattle and Cane", was about growing up on a farm in north Queensland. It was voted among the top 10 best Australian songs of all time by a poll of songwriters and publishers as part of the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA)'s 75th birthday celebration.

And a bit more from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Grant McLennan often told his story better in song than those who wrote about him and his band, the Go-Betweens. Take, for example, these autobiographical lines in Unkind and Unwise, from the 1984 album Spring Hill Fair. "He was brought up in a house of women/ in a city of heat that gave its children/ faith in the fable of coral and fish/ told them the world was something to miss."

I really am quite saddened by this news. I guess as I get older, I can't take for granted that all that has grown around me for so many years will always be there and blooming. But it's not necessarily easy to get that through to my head. And it's certainly harder and harder for me to live up to one of Grant's signature songs from Spring Hill Fair, which I've always carried in my pocket as part of my own philosophy.

It starts with a birthstone
And ends with a tombstone

[...]

And I just say (what do you say?)
Five words: bury them, don't keep them

[UPDATE] Wow - here's a little bit of surprising trivia from the Wikipedia entry for the band:

Evan Katz, producer of the hit show 24, based part of the fourth season of the hit show around a company called McLennan-Forster in honour of his heroes.