Their latest album is called Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express and they've been on the slow train to success for some time now. This time they might be on the right track.

"Art? Fuck off, Bruce. We're into lager. Drinking tinnies on the beach, bonking Sheilas, chundering.

That's what an Australian band should be like, surely. At least when you hear of a band being from the land Down Under that's with 'Wogga-Wogga Surfing Club' on their faded T-shirts and bugger-all on their minds.

Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, however, are not a lot like this. Robert is tall and slightly unearthly-looking, with a long, mournful face. Grant is stocky with fine blond hair and a subtle but deadly sense of humour.

Neither, let it be said, are anything like the stereotype Australian.

Their music, too, defies categorisation; its melodic simplicity echoes the '60s; its careering basslines echo the '80s; its guitar-based rhythms and deft leadlines could be from any time or place. They lyrics, too, are uncategorisable, marrying heartfelt but well-used phrases with odd and unexpected images.

They're good, in other words. So why the heck has their eight-year career not culminated in immense, or at least, reasonable success?

Easy. In that eight years they've had no fewer than seven record companies releasing their burgeoning pop classics. And as any fule kno, when you've got a history like that it's no easy task to keep a consistent high profile. So why have they been through so many organisations? Do they run up huge bills? Do they have a habit of clocking MDs? Are they bastards to work with?

"No, I don't think we're bastards at all." said Robert innocently. "It's been a variety of reasons. Mostly not to do with us at all."

His recounting or their trials and tribulations is not untinged with a wry fatalism; if it hadn't been for their peripatetic antics, it's very likely that they'd be in the same relatively successful niche as their contemporaries and friends. Everything But The Girl, The Smiths, and Aztec Camera.

"It's been a lack of continuity that has caused us problems most," he continued. "We've had four albums out on four different labels, for instance, and that must be a real block for those people who try to get all our records. Some'll be in one record shop, some in another... it must be a nightmare. Sometimes when we go abroad we'll get to a country and find they know our first and third albums but not the others. Then we'll go somewhere else and everyone wants to hear stuff off the fourth but not the first...

"From our point of view it's just annoying having to go through all the negotiations and having to talk to a different set of people every year. I think we might have cracked it now, though, with our present company, Beggar's Banquet. They seem to be very committed to a long-term thing, so we're pretty pleased at the moment.

"It's just been bad luck really. Rough Trade, for instance - we left there when they were going through a period of financial problems and just unloading groups. It came down to just two, eventually, which were of us and The Smiths. So we went.

"We went to Sire, which was just a disaster of a label. There's no office here, no-one works for them in this country at all. But we were signed to English Sire so our records weren't released on Sire in the States, where they're a pretty good label. So we just got sucked into this huge Warners conglomerate where there was this desk with 'Sire Records' on it and nobody sitting at it. There was no promotion, nothing. It was a nightmare.

"No-one's ever said to us 'you bastards, get out of the door', it's been just bad luck. A part of it is that the record industry is incredibly fickle, things change very fast within it. For the first six months you can be going great and then someone loses money, they do their accounts, they take on some staff or start laying some off and they start laying off groups... it's always moving.

"It could have been worse, though. We could have ended up in the huge label area, massive hype and massive amounts of money; for about three months everybody trying and break the band by promotion and heavy hyping and stuff. It's very much hit or miss and if you miss, often through no fault of your own, you're stuck with the stigma of being a failure.

"We've never had that problem, we've always been able to go on because we've never been in that superhybrid situation."

But what about financial success? Have you ever achieved that?

"Errrr.... there have been some very difficult times indeed. But I think we're over that now. Like a lot of bands, we've been able to keep going more on what we received from our publisher than anything else.

"Being on all these different labels, we've never received any royalties from records. None at all. When we left Sire we were sixty thousand pounds in the hole. But they didn't seem too bothered.

"It's not recoupable, so in the year 2000 that album Springhill Fair, might have made sixty thousand pounds and they'll have broken even. But I doubt it.

"Still, WEA can afford it. They might sign ten acts and nine will end up losing fifty thousand pounds... but the tenth will end up making them five million."

Talking of huge success, the latest album, Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express, isn't going to outsell the next Madonna twelve-inch. But it will certainly let a lot more people know about the Go-Betweens' jaunty Pop janglins. So how did they go about this latest opus?

"The most important thing we did in recording this album," said Robert, "was rehearse before it. Most of the other albums we've done, we've had to go off for three weeks in America just beforehand, or play a lot.... we could spend the summer and the autumn working on the songs and there was no pressure on us to play gigs to survive or to cut down on rehearsal time because we couldn't afford it.

"The end result of that was that when we went into the studio everything was ready to be put down on tape and it took three-and-a-half weeks to record and about nine days to mix; pretty fast for a whole album. We recorded and mixed at two different studios, which is good because you get a different perspective. And you get pissed off with the same place all the time, too."

Talking of such, don't you get pissed off with your constant position just outside the charts, on the verge of popular success but not (so far) making the grade?

"Oh yeah, we do," retorted Robert resignedly, "but we've been that close so many times we're almost used to it. If we put out a single and someone says 'hey, that's great! we can put that into the top ten!' we just say 'yeah, sure' and if it happens then it happens but so many people have said that and not done it there's no point in worrying. The first few times we were promised that sort of thing we were disappointed but now we just make the best records we can and hope they get to where they deserve."

Making the best records inevitably involves quite a bit of guitar playing for the Go-Betweens. So what is the best sort of playing?

"Good clean, confident guitar playing," said Robert confidently. "Strong, melodic and sure. I don't like histrionic rock guitar playing and I don't like wimp-rock guitar playing either. I like very tasteful, clean style. I just wish like hell I could play it."

"I'm more of a traditional guitar player than Robert," stated Grant firmly. "I play more classical lead guitar style, for instance I build a lead break in the classic way - state a melody, change it for four or eight bars and then restate it at the end.

"I find I tend to play more lead at the moment because my style seems to suit the lead guitar role better. Not to denigrate Robert's ability at all, but it used to be the case that whoever wrote a song played rhythm while the other one played lead. Now we've settled into more definite slots, Robert plays rhythm while I play over that."

"I'm better at coming up with little riffs, six-note things and so on," claimed Robert. "Often not solid barchords behind the lead, but little melodic things that fit into place and lead into the chorus or out of a bridge or something. I never really learnt to structure a proper lead break, which doesn't particularly bother me at the moment. Maybe next time I'll feel like playing lead."

"The way we approach it within the band," explained Grant, "is that everyone writes their own parts. Either Robert or I will take a fairly complete song to the band, and then it'll get interpreted, often completely differently to how we initially expected. And that's great. I hate bands where the songwriter tells the musicians exactly what to play.

"The end result is that while the two of us write quite different songs, they all end up as recognisably Go-Betweens songs because they've been worked over by the whole band. By the time they get on a record or they get played live nobody can tell the difference.

"If we decide to play a cover version - once we'd decided what to do, because everybody would want to do a different one - it would end up in our style and recognisably a Go-Betweens song."

So what is the key to the Go-Between' trademark noise?

"Strumming, I think," ventured Grant. "I just love hearing the sound of a hand going across strings, that lovely rhythmic thing which sounds great when it slots in with the bass and drums.

"It's nearly died out - in fact, there was a time when it had disappeared entirely - it was all just little fiddly bits and stuff. If you have a strum going there are so many little bits you can put in on top or around it that sound good.

"Like on Television's Marquee Moon LP, some of the guitar playing on that song Venus is brilliant. There's a little riff at the end of lines which takes you into the next line. The bass and drums are doing some great changes too. It's a model of using the basic instruments well. Like we do. I hope.

"Other heroes? Buddy Holly - he was an extraordinary guitarist, and well ahead of his time. Very, very modern rhythmic and lead guitar style. He was a great advertisement for the Strat; one of the first players doing that with it.

"Keith Richards' guitar playing on Let It Bleed. He's a great rhythm player and his lead is great, too. Not just the technique, but some of the noises he gets.

"Robbie Robertson from Dylan's band was magic too. Roddy Frame's a good guitarist... that first Aztec Camera album was technically brilliant, very skilled."

Are you very skilled yourselves?

"I wouldn't say so..." ventures Robert. "We both have an intuitive feel for using the guitar, but if we had to play sessions, I don't know how well we'd do. Really, because we're both songwriters, and that's why we picked up the guitar, we've never got down to learning technique and playing for its own sake.

"I couldn't just walk in on any other band and play - I'd be embarrassed. Really, for the length of time I've been playing I'm an atrocious musician. Terrible. But I get the song over, which is what matters to me.

"Mind you, there is room for really good guitar players, people who play the same four notes over and over again at blinding speed. I really like some of that Heavy Metal guitar solo stuff."

Like who?

"Angus Young. What a great player."

Not quite the typical Australian band. Mind you...