Strawberries On Sunday

Robert Forster has a new album out in May called Strawberries and he's obligingly released the title track as a video this weekend.

Strawberries features Robert duetting with wife Karin Bäumler in what I presume is their kitchen, whilst the family black cat attempts to steal the show in the background. The song and the video are a joy from start to finish.

I''m not only looking forward to the album, but also Robert's return to the UK later this year for a few dates, including a show in Cardiff. Never having seen him or The Go-Betweens live on stage before, I bought tickets without hesitation. Very excited.

All this singing about strawberries inevitably made me think about other such songs, so here are five more. I rigidly stuck to the plural, so no Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles (or Candy Flip, for that matter) or Strawberry Line from the current Beak> album, even though it's brilliant.

Instead, and perhaps inevitably, things continue with Strawberries by Asobi Seksu, a beautiful song from the 2007 album called - what else? - Citrus. The single was accompanied by fine remixes by The Whip, CSS and out-shoegazing the original, Ulrich Schnauss.

Next up is Strawberries Are Growing In My Garden (And It's Wintertime), a 1985 single by The Dentists. I'd like to say that I was hip to the Medway Scene bands as a 14 year old but I'd didn't even know there was a Medway Scene at the time. Frankly, I barely knew that there was a Bristol scene, let alone anywhere further from home.  

I first heard this on the 2005 compilation Children Of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The Second Psychedelic Era 1976-1996 and, had I got there 20 years earlier, it would have been right up my street.

Fast forward to 2014 and Franz Ferdninand, with a low-key release of Fresh Strawberries, on 7' and promo CD single only, although there is a striking monochrome video. Fresh Strawberries closes Side 1 of Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, Franz Ferdinand's 4th album released the previous year. 

The penultimate choice is Taste The Strawberries by War Against Sleep, the non de plume of Duncan Fleming, described as an "ongoing battle against the absurd waking dream that passes for life, in which he plunders the hidden treasures of a thousand charity shop records, writing songs that tingle the spine, move the soul and lift the spirit".

I'm a recent convert and I have to say that I'm all in. There are five albums available on Bandcamp, Taste The Strawberries taken from the 2008 debut Pleasure Complex. I will also have the pleasure of seeing Duncan perform live next month, in a special show with Emily Breeze at the Cube Microplex in Bristol.

There is only way to wrap up this half dozen though, and the one singular exception to the strawberries (plural) theme. That, of course, is Strawberry Switchblade. 

I selected their cover of Jolene, as a tribute to Dolly Parton, whose husband of 60 years, passed away last week. Whilst Dolly's career went into the stratosphere, Carl Dean intentionally kept a low profile, continuing to focus on his Nashville-based asphalt-paving business. 

However, as Dolly revealed decades later, Jolene was inspired by her husband's experience of a cashier at his local bank, who developed a crush on him.

As an impressionable adolescent, I thought Strawberry Switchblade were fantastic. My crush on Jill Bryson, though in the video and TV appearances for Jolene, Rose McDowall was an arresting sight in a leather zip-up one-piece, coming on like a Gothic Emma Peel from The Avengers.

Jolene was released in 1985, and sounds very much of its time, including a musical nod to Bronski Beat's cover of I Feel Love by Donna Summer. I still own and cherish the 12" single, but can it really be forty years old?!