At the late age of 65, The Go-Betweens legend has just released his eighth solo album, The Candle and the Flame, and it’s a life-affirming tribute to growing old comfortably and finding happiness in one’s twilight years.

It’s also a record born out of adversity: Karin Bäumler, Forster’s wife, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer  in 2021, and soon music became the only form of escape for Forster and his family.

“One night, when sitting cross-legged on the couch, after we had played a song, Karin looked up from her xylophone and said, ‘When we play music, is the only time I forget I have cancer.’ That was a big moment,” Forster heartbreakingly revealed in a statement shared to his website last year.

The Candle and the Flame is, in a way, a protest album, one that captures Forster and Bäumler’s powerful insistence that sometimes life simply must go on.

The album was a proper family affair – it was produced by Forster and his wife alongside his son, Louis, of the sadly-departed indie-rock band The Goon Sax – with the trio recording when Bäumler’s health allowed it.

It was worth it in the end, because The Candle and the Flame contains some of the finest songs of Forster’s latter career. Considering mortality, ageing, contentment, anguish and, of course, love, in his singular way, these songs are profoundly moving and quietly cathartic.

As Forster revealed to Rolling Stone AU/NZ, several friends even hailed “Tender Years”, the second song on The Candle and the Flame, as “the best love song” he’s ever written. You can read the inimitable singer-songwriter’s full breakdown of his new album below.

released February 3, 2023