RIP Grant McLennan. I've never been much of a one for writing about music, and I'm not going to start now, but Grant McLennan wrote some of the most beautiful and (to me) important songs ever. Someone was saying on Sinister how the deaths of Elliot Smith and Kurt Cobain were terrible but almost not surprising - they were troubled characters from the start, not so much living fast and dying young as living in pain and dying in drama. But Grant's death, though quieter (in his sleep on Saturday) is somehow more shocking because so unexpected. He was 48, unbearably young when you think about the recent reformation of the Go Betweens and all the great work he obviously had left in him.
What I loved about his songs was the understated erudition, the sweetness, the vein of surrealism, the poppiness which would suddenly be shot through with spikey darkness. They were songs which crept inside my head without me noticing and emerged later on a bus, on a desolate beach, in bed crying. They could be insanely uplifting (Spring Rain, Right Here), sweet and simple (Bachelor Kisses, Quiet Heart) or stunningly unique (Cattle and Cane). I need to spend some time just listening again, I think.
Goodbye Grant, I can't believe there won't be any more.
True Love and High Adventure
