Tallulah

Tallulah is the fifth album by The Go-Betweens. It was released in May 1987 in the UK on Beggars Banquet Records. Prior to the recording of the album, the group had expanded to a five-piece with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Amanda Brown. The original release consisted of ten songs. In 2004, LO-MAX Records released an expanded CD which included a second disc of ten bonus tracks and music videos for the songs, "Right Here" and "Bye Bye Pride". Recording Initial recording was done with Craig Leon in an attempt to make more commercial music. Only two tracks, both featuring synthesisers and drum machines, were ever completed, including the single "Right Here". Robert Forster later wrote that the band were "playing day after day, getting tighter and tighter, believing at least two of us would be playing on the recordings at the same time. Why did we bother? We arrived on the first day of the session to find Craig behind a bank of keyboards filling the control room, programming the drums, bass and organ lines." With much of the recording budget spent on two songs, the remaining sessions with a new producer were hurried and the band was unhappy with the initial results. Forster said, "We were sort of cursed. We had the engineer that we were using on Liberty Belle, Dicky Preston, and working with Dicky was good. We then went on to the next one and we were put into this horrible studio it was over a practice room or something. And so Dicky didn't do a good job I think on Tallulah, so it had to be rescued and remixing a little but which always sounds horrible but it actually worked out okay with Mark Wallis." On the addition of Amanda Brown, Forster said, "with a violin and oboe player in the band, it meant we sounded like no one else. Which is always a good thing. On Tallulah she broadened our sound, and gave it more drama, which the songs needed."