Based around songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, The Go-Betweens were perhaps the quintessential cult band of the '80s: they came from an exotic locale (Brisbane, Australia), moved to London in a sustained bid to make a career out of music, released album after album of music seemingly tailor-made for the radio in spite of their having little use for contemporary Top 40 musical/lyrical formulas, and earned considerable critical praise and a small but fervent international fan base. Although the Go-Betweens were absent throughout the '90s before re-forming in the new millennium, both of the band's songwriters embarked on respectable solo careers in the interim and, while rarely reaching the heights the Go-Betweens scaled, they still managed to uphold the group's legacy.

The band lineup changed again with the inclusion of violinist/oboeist Amanda Brown before recording sessions began and, in keeping with the group's near-perfect streak of releases, Tallulah itself is a delight.

A review by Robert Christgau:
They stick to what they know, and their knowledge increases. The quartet's a quintet now, up one violin, which may not seem like much but does serve to reinforce the hooks that have never been a strength of their understated, ever more explicit tales from the bourgeois fringe. So though I was pulled in by "The Clarke Sisters"--"They sleep in the back of a feminist bookstore"--I soon got involved with every song on the album, with a special rush for "Right Here," where Robert Forster or Grant McLennan, I still have trouble telling them apart, stands by his woman. A

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  The Go-Betweens – 10 of the best

  From shambolic cult pop to FM-friendly accessibility, these tracks display Grant McLennan’s melodic genius and Robert Forster’s lyrical brilliance