New Musical Express

6 April 1985

KEEPS UP WITH THE JONES

STRAWBERRY SWITCHBLADE

STRAWBERRY SWITCHBLADE! What a great name for a group, slamming into the consciousness contradictory images of summery sweetness and neon-lit danger, tarts and cold steel. Yeah great name, rotten group.

That image! Now there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with dressing up to shock, to excite, to titillate or to sell pop records. In fact, it’s a time honoured pop tradition. But why oh why do they have to look like they’ve been designed by a committee of pubescent males at a single-sex school – perfect masturbatory fantasies for the immature – or like victims of some Blue Peter contest to clothe a pop group from the detritus of your mum’s sewing basket?

As I say, there’s a long history of sartorial attention-grabbing in pop and that’s fine, but there’s something about these cuties’ smug ragamuffin Liberty look that grates before the stylus even nestles in the groove.

Oh, the record? Well that’s another problem. People with shredded clothes, magenta hair, PR-inspired amputations or any other eight-miles-high gimmick always squeal and squawk ‘listen to the music, listen to the music!’ So you listen, and listen carefully, to SS – and what do you hear?

A decent idea; the tiny, reedy cooings of Rose McDowall (the one with the red and yellow ribbons) and Jill Bryson (the one with the yellow and red ribbons) set to that modern electric beat thing. The Cocteaus’ trance dance stance in a less imposing frame. A confection of candyfloss and icing sugar. But great pop music? Even good pop music? I’m afraid not.

Sometimes it’s not bad. The self-consciously ethereal ‘Being Cold’ and ‘Another Day’ work best, being the least chart-aimed and thus allowing the girls’ voices more scope to gurgle rather wistfully around in producer Phil Thornally’s shifting flower beds of soft noises.

Elsewhere though, it’s terribly unappetising fare. Those unchanging vocal mannerisms reproduced to the gleeful phut-phut-put of toy drums and keyboards. It’s sometimes hard to survive a whole Switchblade without thinking about making the tea, imagine the captivating effect of 11 of the buggers one after another!

A nadir and sharp focus of the ethos of this hapless pair is provided by the two versions of this LP’s worst song. With whom I ask you, do they share a penchant for eccentric clothing, keyboard noodlings, la la choruses and songs with earthshatteringly meaningful titles like ‘Who Knows What Love Is?’, the above mentioned offender? Yes, it’s our old mate Howard Jones.

Strawberry Switchblade get their songs into the middle reaches of the charts, appear a lot on Saturday Superstore and the like, and get their faces staring from the windows of a lot of record shops. Therefore they make very good pop stars. And very average pop records.

Danny Kelly