The Go-Betweens: Liberty Belle & the Diamond Express, Tallulah, 16 Lovers Lane

ROBERT FORSTER and Grant McLennan are my kind of guys. Thoughtful, wary, bemused, these are men who have known love and lost it, kept their humor, scribbled earnestly in their notebooks and then reconfigured their experiences in songs as wise and deep as their friendship. At their frequent best Forster and McLennan combine the Beatles of 'She's Leaving Home' with the Beatles of 'Eight Days a Week': at once baroque and ecstatic. Their songs honor the complexity of their emotions.