THE APARTMENTS Drift (reissue, 1993)

Fête Foraine (reissue, 1996) RILEY/MICROCULTURES

7/10 / 9/10 The lost boy of Australian independent music, reissued

Peter Milton Walsh – who basically is The Apartments – will always be entwined with the story of The GoBetweens: he was briefly a member, in their early years. But this slice of biography too often overshadows Walsh’s own mercurial talents. An eloquent songwriter of rare power, his songs – portraits of romances and lives fumbling into freefall – have devastating collective impact. Drift was his first in eight years, after the lustrous, fragile The Evening Visits… (reissued by Captured Tracks in 2015); it’s a bold, yet curiously brittle set of songs, documenting, in Walsh’s own words, “a set of characters who drifted in and out of not just the songs but each other’s lives”. It’s full of transit, a series of set pieces for urban anomie and romantic collapse, the songs shining through some rather ’90s production mores. Fête Foraine, by contrast, revisits songs from across his career, in quiet acoustic repose: with Chris Abrahams (The Necks) on piano, it’s perhaps the best context for Walsh’s songs, the centrepiece a devastating “Sunset Hotel”, which is deeply moving, yet unsettling. Extras: None.