Stanley sobre Laura Nyro y Robert Forster en The Times

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This is Forster's first album since the death of Grant McLennan, his partner in the Go Betweens for 25 years. McLennan's spirit infiltrates pretty much every song, with From Ghost Town and It Ain't Easy (“I write these words to his tune, that he wrote on a full moon”) direct tributes. McLennan tended to write the softer songs, Forster the more forthright and anguished. Yet the songwriting divide wasn't always that clear cut - both leant towards Carver-style storytelling - and Forster has adopted more of his late friend's spare style. Don't Touch Anything has a Blood on the Tracks intensity, while Let Your Light in Babe features sly prose to rank alongside the Go Betweens' best songs.

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The fanfare of a title is justified; though few noticed in 1966, Laura Nyro was genuinely the first of a new breed - the female singer-songwriter - whose time was still several years hence. With her voice pitched between Dusty and Broadway, even future classics such as Wedding Bell Blues and Stoney End were too much red meat for mid-Sixties radio. Nyro hated her debut, feeling she had been hemmed in by Herb Bernstein's pop-soul arrangements, but the mix of his efforts and her soulfulness remains spring-fresh.

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