Sounds
8 December 1984
SWITCHBORED
STRAWBERRY SWITCHBLADE
Euston Shaw Theatre
Strawberry Switchblade: not so much dotty as grotty
I take it you already know what women are? Right, fine. So as the seating arrangements inform us, sex is irrelevant here and the twee polite Glaswegian duo that stopped time on this strange evening can be unreviewed accordingly.
But you’ll be wanting to know about clothes, for this is how and why Strawberry Switchblade (such a clever name – such duality!) get their picture in the papers. The little one (hereafter referred to as the Sweetest) sports black and white polka dots, short skirt and long ribbons. The big one (the Sweetest’s Friend) is in a sort of Woodstock throwback wicked witch job with ladybirds all over it. She tells us someone was once ‘moved to describe us as depressing Christmas cakes’. Moved, huh?
But you’ll be wanting to know about Sheila Smith, who pre-empted out heroines by singingalongatapes of such original revolutionary moroseburgers as ‘Nightclubbing’ and ‘Summertime’. History is her oyster, and it’s clogging up her throat. Unpleasant.
Unlike the SS girls, who sing a simple song, spend five minutes re-arranging guitar straps, then sing us another one do. Without the backing tapes (Icicle Works? Ellery Bop?), we’d be hearing one pretty but shrill voie, one feeble one, and the occasional wispy guitar strum. Trees and flowers, another day, not much really.
‘Who knows what love is?’ The Sweetest cannot reach all the notes or the ‘fragile, vulnerable’ charisma to which she aspires. Remember Dolly Mixture? The slides show snakes, honeycombs, china girls etc etc. The Sweetest’s Friend seems embarrassed. As they tweet into the Velvets’ ‘Sunday Morning’, someone behind us says ‘Oh what a classic’ like he’s just discovered Newfoundland.
We are definitely in a timewarp, albeit a comfortable fleecy one. A baby starts crying somewhere (honest). The primeval scream jolts us back into present consciousness and clutching coats we race wildly for the pub. I can only assume Polly ’n’ Molly are still onstage going ‘tra la la la la’ and one day will turn up on your TV screens miming to the same cosmic revelations. Probable megastars, without a shadow. No shadow, no mystery. I expect they snore.
CHRIS ROBERTS
Listen to and download the performance in the Live Recordings section of the site.
Read the Melody Maker review and the NME review of the same gig.
Huge thanks to Zounds Abound for the scan of this review.
