Let’s Go Naked

Emotion Engine [Trust]

Coming out of Brisbane in the mid 1980s with a kit bag full of literate melodic pop songs, a girl drummer and a striped sunlight sound, the band were often referred to as “Let’s Go Between”. Now three decades later, based in Brisbane with a Go-Between in the line-up you’re not going to escape those comparisons. So that’s the starting point but Emotion Engine is a singular work, chugging away a very long place from the Go-Betweens little corner of the world.

Drummer Rosalinda McGovern and guitarist Martin Thompson have gone, replaced respectively by Michael Sachs and Willsteed while Channel Nine News Queensland newsreader Andrew Lofthouse holds down the bass and Murray Power provides guitar, words and vocals. The band’s resurrection was prompted a few years by a small Scottish label who wanted to reissue earlier Let’s Go Naked work and encouraged the ensemble to put the old band back together to see if there’s anything in the tank.

From my point of view, this is a very different ensemble and on every level much improved. Where the band was once kind of twee and a little thin they seemed self conscious about themselves in the way that first bands can be. Now Power et al still love the jangly pop but they make it their own. Power’s lyrics betray life’s experiences. His vocals are pushing against the years of not singing and there’s a nice Kilbey-ish tension. Lofthouse understands that the key to jangly pop is not the ringing tones of the guitars but the depth and muscularity of the bass and he delivers those big plum notes with Zen accuracy, accompanied by an assured drum track. Willsteed is the show off here with all manner of textured guitar lines. This is a record that certainly moved into the territory of Eighties pop but Let’s Go Naked have finally produced a record that belongs in that canon alongside Orange Juice or Prefab Sprout or indeed the best of the Church and some of the Go -Betweens.

[rating: 4/5]

Johnny Friendly