A musical family’s love and determination produces a powerful record
In 1987, Karin met Robert in Heidelberg, Germany. She was a psychology student and he played in the Australian band The Go-Betweens. Karin had seen The Go-Betweens at a show a year earlier, and while attending another performance, Karin and her friend Erhard stumbled on to the band after their soundcheck. They chatted with the group, then attended the show, and afterwards, at a bar, ran into the band members again. That night Karin and Robert found space to talk and get to know each other.
The Go-Betweens returned to Germany on another tour and Karin once again attended a few shows. Karin and Robert met afterwards again, always in groups—her friends and his bandmates. In his book Grant & I, Robert describes seeing Karin for the second time. “Since I’d met her eighteen months before she had grown more beautiful and further into her own style—long vintage dresses and boots, a scarf in her hair.” His attraction to Karin proved inescapable. “A sixties, Jane Birkin quality she had, thrillingly tall too.” This time, as The Go-Betweens’ tour continued, they kept in touch, sending hand-written letters to each other. On another swing through Europe, and after seeing Karin for the third time at a show in Düsseldorf, Robert knew it was time to break it off with his current partner. “From Bologna I wrote to Kathleen, ending our relationship. Cowardly on the one hand; on the other I was following what I knew to be the true course of my heart. Karin Bäumler was the woman l’d been searching for.” Karin Bäumler and Robert Forster married in May 1990.
The couple initially settled in Germany. Robert was launching a solo career after The Go-Betweens had disbanded the previous year. They had two children: son Louis, in 1998, followed by daughter Loretta in 2001. In 2000, The Go-Betweens reformed, and to make the band work, they moved the family to Brisbane, the city where Robert grew up. The renewed group was on a roll, making some of their finest music as heard on the excellent 2005 album Oceans Apart. But it would be the band’s last record after school friend and co-founding member Grant McLennan died of a heart attack a year after.
In 2021, Robert began making plans for a new solo album, his eighth, to be completed in 2022. Karin, who played in the band Baby You Know when she met Robert, had been a contributing partner in her husband’s solo work, singing and playing violin on albums, and performing with him on stage. Later that year, in July, Karin learned she had stage 4 ovarian cancer. Preparation for the new album stopped and art was put on hold to focus on treatment. Louis canceled tour dates in Europe with his band, The Goon Sax, to be there for his mother. Days were spent on chemo and, at night, Karin and Robert sat in front of a fire and sang together as he strummed a guitar. The singing was a way to forget—a blend of therapy and solace.
They sang the new songs, the ones Robert wrote for the album. Soon, Louis joined them on guitar, followed by The Go-Betweens’ bassist Adele Pickvance. They made a recording and then all agreed that an album was needed. It took six months, scattered days in the studio, whenever Karin was feeling up to it. Songs were recorded live, with just a few takes and little overdub. “Everything sort of just bloomed out in a way, without any sort of master plan.” Robert told Steve Bell for TheMusic.com.au.
The Candle and the Flame is a family record, produced by Karin, Louis and Robert with added guitar and vocals from Loretta. There’s strength, courage, resistance and tenderness in the songs but never a sense of defeat. But, then again, eight of the nine songs were written before the cancer was discovered. You’d think Robert has a sixth sense of what was to come. “Go Free,” “Always,” “It’s Only Poison,” and “There’s a Reason to Live” all sound like they came from the family’s post-diagnosis experiences. “The Roads” looks back and recalls the couple tooling around Bavaria and “Tender Years” is one of Robert’s sweetest love songs. In the video for “Tender Years,” Robert sings and dances around their kitchen in Brisbane, preparing a meal. The dancing is the kind that might make his adult children cringe, but, still, it’s playful and funny and Karin earned a choreography credit for the clip. She’s the one telling Robert to “slow down and move with the music” between takes.
Lyrics for “She a Fighter” were the only ones written while Karin was in treatment. There are only six words, but no more were needed. “She’s a Fighter” features just the four family members: Karin, Robert, Louis and Loretta, with Karin thunderously playing the Xylophone. The video places them in the studio, sitting in a circle facing each other in an Elvis ‘68 Comeback Special boxing ring format. “Here we are almost a year after the diagnosis being filmed playing this song,” Robert explained to Steve Bell. “We just knew the power of that, and the power of us doing it as a family. And we already knew the power of the song.” No other track on The Candle and the Flame has this level of blistering emotion.
“I’m a woman and I am a fighter,” Karin states in a video about ovarian cancer she made for the fashion label Camilla and Marc in early 2023. “That’s what that song’s about. And you really got to step into your power with it.” It’s been over a year since The Candle and the Flame was released and almost three years since the diagnosis. The operation and the chemo were successful and Karin is managing cancer with the help of a new medication sponsored by a pharmaceutical company. And Robert is touring again after a three-year layoff, sometimes performing with Louis. There’s a reason to live.