“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however, necessarily say what Forster actually sees. These vignettes about encounters between characters come across as imaginary scenarios.
This contrasts with the former Go-Betweens lynchpin’s last album, The Candle and the Flame, which was a direct – albeit allusive – reaction to the diagnosis and treatment of his wife Karin Bäumler’s cancer.
“Tell it Back to me,” the tale opening Forster’s ninth solo album, tells of a man – an English teacher – who meets a woman who speaks French. The lyrics then riff on what life together might be like. Perhaps “a marriage on the skids because of the kids.” Next, for “Good to Cry,” there’s a celebration in a restaurant off Russell Square. It's culminated by tears. The couple in “Breakfast on the Train” were at school together and, after a chance encounter in Edinburgh, they retire to a hotel. “It was her idea, it was expensive, but it was near.” “Foolish I Know” envisions a gay crush on a straight man. “He’s handsome and he’s unattached, I like him but there’s just one catch… you cannot have what you cannot touch.” The title track encapsulates the feeling that forbidden fruit is never far on this album. In “Strawberries,” Forster gives in to temptation and eats what he should not – Bäumler joins him on vocals. The lyrics recall the William Carlos Williams poem “This is Just to Say.”
There are other evocations. “Tell it Back to me” has the swing-and-sway of The Go-Betweens. The opening section of album closer “Diamonds” nods to The Buffalo Springfield’s “For What it’s Worth”. It also incorporates segments of guitar squall and free-jazz-like noise. There is even a falsetto vocal – a first for this singer-songwriter. Quite unlike anything Forster has done previously. His trademark understatement has been set aside.
Rather than Forster's home country of Australia, Strawberries was recorded in Stockholm with a (mostly: Forster's son Louis appears on guitar) Swedish band led by producer Peter Morén, of Peter, Björn and John. It is very fresh, live and open sounding. Fitting, as while The Candle and the Flame was about taking stock, the spirited Strawberries wholeheartedly celebrates life’s quirks and temptations.
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