<p><span><span>- Melbourne folk punk stalwarts The Go Set mark their 18th year of existence with a double EP set <em>Of Bright Futures and Broken Pasts</em>, which when combined essentially make up the band's 7th full length release.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>The title indicates a sense of temporality, and that is certainly reflected in the lyrics. More than half of the songs are in some way about the passage of time. Several songs feature choruses about years rolling on. <em>When The Winter Ends </em>sees songwriter <strong>Justin Keenan</strong>'s growing young son as the embodiment of time. <em>Empires </em>critiques a life lived for the future that misses the present moment. <em>Sleepy Little Town</em> uses the metaphor of a river flowing to illustrate years going by. I guess this is understandable for a band nearly two decades in and members in their 40's. Time is the great constant, and it's human to reflect on how its journey affects our lives</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Nostalgia is a theme of the record too, a fact openly stated in the album's promotional material. This is understandable too as you get older, in a rapidly changing world. You could say there is something inherently nostalgic about the Go Set's mix of Irish folk, 70's punk and 80's pub rock. "<em>Maybe I'm just getting old, but the bands don't write good songs any more"</em> says lead single <em>Mixed Tapes.</em></span></span></p>
<p><span><span><em>"Sometimes I put the old songs on... Sometimes I just wanna feel something again"</em> the song goes on to say. Most of us can relate in some way with that lyric I suppose, music never does mean quite as much when you get older as it does when you're a teenager discovering it. But there is a kind of tension in a band still releasing new songs but seemingly giving up on it having the emotional resonance of old songs and younger audiences.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>We're all prone to nostalgia at times, but it can be problematic or even dangerous when we are caught in idealised notions of the past that don't allow us to focus clearly on the present or the future. "<em>Time won't wait while we search for our treasure, or for us to get our shit together" </em>goes one chorus, which is doubly true if the treasure you are seeking lies in a past that is never coming back and probably wasn't actually as good as you remember it to be.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>The political outcome of nostalgia can be seen in the neo-conservativsm of Trump's "make America great again" slogan, or the aging Brexit voter longing for the days of Rule Britannia. This is maybe unfair to The Go Set given their politics are firmly left-wing, but it is notable that the protest songs on this album focus on old men bearing the scars of futile wars. Australia is currently fighting a war overseas and has been for the last two decades, but you wouldn't know that from this album.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>It's on the song <em>1981</em> that the nostalgia began to grate a little for me. The song harks back to Keenan's childhood, "<em>a Sunnyboy summer in a Kingswood backseat" </em>with<em> "The Swingers counting the beat on the radio</em>." Nostalgia for childhood risks a kind of infantilism, a yearning for days when you had no responsibilities or real understanding of the world outside your own limited experience. I guess it's an understandable response to a world engulfed in neverending crises we seemingly have no control over, but I don't think it's a helpful one.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Facing the reality of time's passage means understanding that, just like our past got us to our present state, the way we live now affects the future of ourselves and others. The worry I got from listening to The Go Set waxing nostalgic is that it represents a tendency in middle age to shift focus away from the future and retreat into an idealised notion of the past, like those songs that actually weren't that different to what's being released now but seem so much better. In a time when our future is uncertain, hiding away from it is a guaranteed way to make sure it won't be as good as the sepia-tinged memories.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Time does keep rolling on, as The Go Set have noted. And if we spend too much time living in our bright pasts we might just end up with a broken future.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>- Andy Paine.</span></span></p>
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