Anatomy Of A Classic: Strawberry Switchblade

Everyone adored their hit single, ‘Since Yesterday’, but Strawberry Switchblade’s eponymous album had many more beautiful songs. In their aesthetic and musical DNA lies a plethora of influences.

Sixties icons Brigitte Bardot and The Shangri-Las.

Their look is the first obvious jumping -off point. There’s a strong goth look in the Siouxsie-esque make-up and corsets, but the flowers and ribbons are at once signifiers of girlishness and playfulness and emblematic of a knowledge of artists like Frida Kahlo, and Roy Lichtenstein. Jill Bryson is now a successful artist in her own right, so they were obviously aware of creating something that was at once homage and original. It’s been said that the duo in turn influenced the Harajuka Japanese “goth Lolita” look, but I feel it’s more anime inspired.

Their music had a little post-punk attitude, but contained “tippy-tappy drums” as the sleeve notes had it by The Cure’s Boris Williams. So it is very eighties, but with the sweet melancholic undertow of girl groups like The Shangri-Las. Singer Rose McDowall’s voice is a sweet sigh of regret and rumination. ‘Go Away’ , ‘Being Cold’, ‘Let Her Go’ and ’10 James Orr Street’, the latter of which deals with McDowall’s old Glasgow home facing demolition, feel like confessional pop, dealing with lost things and soured relationships. It’s a shame that there was no follow-up and curious how they never ignited in the way that they should have. It’s a beautiful, underrated record.