Customer Reviews

Strawberry Switchblade

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Back in 1985 when this came out I played this album continually and now I have the CD nothing's changed!
Every track is a favourite for me - Rose McDowall's vocals always move me and Jill contributed just as much to the bands sound.
Of the extra tracks I especially like the extended mix of Who Knows What Love Is? and their cover of Jolene.
Play this album and I promise you will play it again. Strawberry Switchblade made one album - its beautiful and perfect and stands out from its contempories as much as the girls did from theirs.

My only critism of this CD, is that it did not include the original version of 'Go away'. Then again, maybe that one should have been include on the 12" CD release. The recording quality is second to none. They used the original cover of the first released vynil, so none of the bonus tracks are on the back cover track listings. This is made up by the pull out bilingual sleeve and includes lyrics too! These songs are just as fresh today as they were in 1985. A testiment to the timelessness of the quality of Rose McDowall and Jill Bryson's superb musical skill and insights. Most would catagorize this "PopGothic", but it is more than just an inane label. It's ART and it sould be comtemplated and pondered upon as such. My favorite tracks? All of them and the album should be listened to as one set piece and judged as such.

I listened to a lot of "new wave" in the early 1980s but Strawberry Switchblade is the only group I still listen to now - their mix of wistful, sometimes melancholy pop still sounds fresh 15 years later. The sound is mostly keyboards/synths with drums, but also with nice touches from horns, strings, and woodwinds. This collection has their entire debut album plus various B-sides and later singles; it only seems to be missing the B-sides "By the Sea" and "Sunday Morning". And the liner notes have all the lyrics (in both English and Japanese)!!

I can listen to this CD over and over again, because it is so enjoyable and fresh. It is fun and easy going. Reminds me of the time when there was not so much pressure in listening to music.

As an eighties poppy-pop girl-band record, this is well produced with plenty of zippy beat about it. Give it 5 for that. But I fear that it may have been the downfall of Strawberry Switchblade as such. They were forced into a mould they really didn't need in my view. It is no match for the PURE Strawberry Switchblade of the 1983 "Trees and Flowers" and "Since Yesterday" singles. These showcased their beautifully light voices in gorgeous harmony, their vivid, sometimes sad renderings of their own songs. They were charged with expression and truly reached out to the listener.

Sadly, such songs had to sterilised for this mass-market album, with very accurate if clumsily overbearing percussion, ridiculously drooling synthesised violins and a barrage of effects units etc. Take track 8 as an example: "Go away". Those who know the half-lit despair of the poem will probably turn this album off here. Go Away was first presented unaccompanied and so expressive of the poem. It brought out goose bumps. On this album it is underpinned by percussion that sounds like kids bashing nursery toys and someone whacking a fake piano with all the delicacy of an elephant trying to repair a watch. The expression has gone. Surely the producers KNEW what they were taking away from the original interpretations?
So, it's a nice album that tried to normalize Strawberry Switchblade to any other average marketable band. It's a shame that those original singles were never issued in their original form on a CD.

I was expecting a gloomy gothic production or something in the vein of Danielle Dax. However, I was surprised by the poppy-ness of this CD. The standouts for me were the Dolly Parton cover of "Jolene," "Since Yesterday," "Who Knows What Love Is?," and "I Can Feel," (I actually remembered this one played in the goth clubs in the late 80s). As for the other tracks, it took a while for them to sink in. Would really like to hear this group without the Belinda Carlisle-ish poppy production.

First the bad news. I really can't see why `Sunday Morning' (which, dare I say it, I prefer to the Velvet Underground original) and `By The Sea' were excluded in favour of the extended versions of `Trees and Flowers' (note the bad edit) and `Since Yesterday' (cool clarinet solo though) and the awful `Ecstacy'. Blame it on the eccentric tastes of the Japanese.
Despite that, the majority of this disc is pure 1980s-electro-psychedelic-girlgroup-pop heaven. I guess their roots in Postcard and post-punk, the seemingly opposed arenas of new-pop innocence and art-rock bleakness, enabled them to create a unique sound within the realm of electro-pop, even in 1984-6, when its time seemed to have already passed. Besides the ubiquitous Hit, `Another Day', `Let Her Go', `Jolene' (with Larry Adler in tow), the remake of `Go Away', `Secrets' and the obscure `I Can Feel' (where the juxtaposition of Moroder-esque sequencer patterns with Rose's sensuous vocal works wonders) are gems.
And they created even more unique sounds when the synths were toned down or absent - see the near-gothic `Deep Water' and `Poor Hearts' (my favorites), `James Orr Street' with its 1967-Beatles brass coda, `Michael...' and of course `Trees and Flowers'.
Yes, the vocals are annoyingly flat on `Black Taxi'. And yes, the lyrics sometimes don't make sense or are over-simplistic. To be honest, I really don't care.

An ex-girlfriend asked me to paint Rose & Jill on her bedroom wall. I never finished it because we broke up before I did Rose. This album reminds me of never finishing a painting of Rose & Jill on my ex-girlfriend's bedroom wall.
And of milk.

It was so nice to receive Strawberry Switchblade's CD. Ihave all their music on album form from Japanese import to picture disc.This greatest hits transports all the beautiful and wonderful lyrics and voices on CD. This CD has a collection of rare and hard to come by songs and well as all their fantastic hits. From "Dolly Parton's" Jolene, to the wonderful, beautiful "Who Know's What Love Is" This is a fantastic CD if you were and are a "Strawberry Switchblade" fan.

Whenever I listen to this CD, I don't simply feel the audio pleasure, my mind is seeped in with music that is unassumming but never flat, stoic but poetic and pensive yet expressive. McDowall's and Bryson's voices blend like sweet melancholia as if slithering smoothly to perish any chaos even before it threatens to come. What will come to mind aren't just singing voices, but some concocted nightingale-esque tones flowing almost as natural as their perky instruments and sound arrrangments. Their music simply transcends your moods to springvale. Strawberry Switchblade is a sweet minty treasure!