The Evangelist

The Evangelist is the fifth solo album by Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster, released by YepRoc in 2008. Background Following the 1989 break-up of the Go-Betweens, the band he had formed at college in 1978 with his friend Grant McLennan, Robert Forster embarked on a solo career, releasing four albums under his own name between 1990 and 1996. In 2000, the Go-Betweens reunited and went on to record the albums The Friends of Rachel Worth (2000), Bright Yellow Bright Orange (2003) and Oceans Apart (2005). After winning Best Adult Contemporary Album at the 2005 ARIA Music Awards for Oceans Apart, Forster and McLennan began working on the tenth Go-Betweens album and had started writing eight songs together. McLennan died of a heart attack in May 2006, and Forster began work on completing three of the songs they had started writing together. The first new song that Forster wrote for the Evangelist was its title track, which was written in one day in August 2006. Forster and his former bandmates, bass player Adele Pickvance and drummer Glenn Thompson, travelled to London to record the album with producers Mark Wallis and Dave Ruffy in the same studio they used to record Oceans Apart. In the studio, the band set McLennan's guitar and amplifier up while they were recording. The band used a string quartet that featured three musicians, including Audrey Riley, that had previously played on the Go-Betweens' 1986 album Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express. The Evangelist was released on 4 April 2008 in mainland Europe, 21 April in the United Kingdom, 26 April in Australia and 29 April the United States. Reception