Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Strawberry Switchblade (1985).

Their Goth, proto-Harajuku Girls regalia suggested some kind of post New Wave, novelty act. However, despite their intimidating appearance, Strawberry Switchblade was actually a couple of nice girls from Scotland that worked really hard at writing and performing their original tunes. Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall only released one album as a duo, but it was filled with Pop gems as catchy as Bananarama at their best, and some lovely slow ballads that linger when they're over.

The album, produced by Queen bassist, John Deacon, has a crisp, punchy sound, and is full of deluxe and glittery, state of the art (as of 1985) digital instrumentation (I'm thinking, probably the Emulator II, or the Ensoniq Mirage: two cutting-edge, 8-bit samplers that came out in 1984).


They reached the UK top ten with the single, "Since Yesterday" (with a little help from Jean Sibelius' 5th Symphony).

The cheesy video is all you'd hope it would be: