ROBERT FORSTER Inferno (EMI) (A version of this review was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on March 2.) Robert Forster’s old mucker Grant McLenann once sang about being in the core of the flame, that place where the light may burn brightest but “I know what I mean but I just don’t say, cos all the old words get in the way”. On his new album, his seventh solo (after nine with McLenann in The Go-Betweens), and his first in four years, Forster positions himself in the cor

Picture by Bleddyn Butcher A couple of late middle-age blokes are bantering about obsolescence, the realisation when the return calls take forever to come and the invitations dry up, that you may be yesterday’s man and better get used to it. Without rancour, the far more talented and accomplished of the pair, Robert Forster, says “I’ve been yesterday’s man a couple of times, I know. I just put my head down and thought I’m just going to do the best work I can and keep doing it