Pitchfork

"We were too good for the bloody charts," quips former Go-Between singer/ guitarist/ songwriter Robert Forster in the liner notes to Bellavista Terrace: The Best of the Go-Betweens, released by the band's original label, Beggars Banquet. As arrogant as the above statement may seem, if you're hip to this band's short but distinguished career, you know Forster's merely stating the obvious. Their lack of commercial success was due in part to hitting their creative peak at a time in the late '80s when lite- metal gods like Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses had a stranglehold on the Top 40, along with perenially tiresome trash like Madonna and everyone's favorite dancing surgical mishap, Michael Jackson.

Then again, will there ever be a place on the American charts for sensitive fellows who write elegant, humanistic pop songs full of metaphor, emotional depth and bleeding heart sentimentality? Somehow the Go-Betweens just didn't appeal to the legions of martini- sipping stockbrokers and Bon Jovi- worshipping hair- rockers that seemed to overpopulate the Earth back then. Big surprise.

All exaggeration aside, though, many of the Go-Betweens' new wave contemporaries, in comparison, amounted to little more than out- of- work hairdressers blindly groping their Casios and pretending to be Japanese. Forster and songwriting partner Grant McLennan burst onto the scene like displaced medieval troubadours, having just traded in their lutes for electric guitars, yet still embracing classical styles (lend an ear to "Bye Bye Pride," for one, for the undeniably heavy baroque influence). The addition of Amanda Brown's violin and oboe playing added an essential dimension to their overall sound, not to mention the occasional angelic three- part vocal harmony by Forster, McLennan, and one of their many auxiliary backing vocalists.

But I'll venture to say that both 1988's 16 Lovers Lane and 1982's Before Hollywood, individually, would probably make for more rewarding listening than this new collection of songs. Even so, from the masterful 16 Lovers Lane came the seductive "Streets of Your Town," "Was There Anything I Could Do?," and the crystalline tearjerker "Dive for Your Memory," which has poor Forster ready to face any humiliation, including a figurative drowning, just to jog the selective memory of a reluctant lover in denial: "Now I dive black waters/ The waters of her dream." The spare beauty of "Cattle and Cane" and "That Way" are culled from Before Hollywood. "Spring Rain," off 1985's Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express, is also welcome on Bellavista Terrace, with Forster and McLennan beating the Mekons at their own game with a clever and fairly uncharacteristic country- rock tune.

Of course, a "best of" collection like this one may not suit the average hardline Go-Betweens fan. I mean, you know us-- the bitchy elitists who thought college rock was dead after the Replacements, the Feelies and the Go-Betweens broke up, and when R.E.M. began to sound like REO Speedwagon. We may get snippy and say it's futile to try and distill the Go-Betweens' greatness down to a few songs. After all, the band never really had what one would call a "standout" track or potential single. Instead, their body of work was marked by an overall consistency few artists could match.

Again, when you're dealing with a band whose best work can't be easily compiled for commercial marketing purposes, a greatest hits compilation may seem superfluous. But for anyone unfamiliar with the Go-Betweens' legacy and in need of a worthy sampler of some sadly overlooked and uncompromising music from a decade otherwise darkened by urban blight, cocaine- crazed, cigar- chomping capitalists, the threat of nuclear war and Debbie Gibson, Bellavista Terrace will do just fine, thanks.