AMG Review of Calling From a Country Phone

Greg Adams
All Music Guide

Calling From a Country Phone is sometimes referred to as Robert Forster's "country" album, but the folk-rock sound (with occasional pedal steel) recalls Felt's Me and a Monkey on the Moon more than anything that has ever come out of Nashville. Forster's no-frills production suits his idiosyncratic and dramatic style, which requires very little in terms of accompaniment for its effect. "Atlanta Lie Low" seems too low-key to open an album, but it is immediately followed by "121," an unusually straight rocker on which Forster's delivery actually suggests Elvis Presley at times. "Drop" was the album's single, a dynamic song that deserved to be heard but would have found no place on the charts of the day, and "Falling Star" is just as good. Calling From a Country Phone is the only one of Forster's solo albums that was never released in the U.S., which is both disappointing and understandable since it probably would not have gained an audience beyond the adulatory cult surrounding the Go-Betweens.