Robert Forster - Strawberries (2025)

For more than four decades, Robert Forster's strengths have remained consistent, even as his style has subtly evolved. Vocal melodies always form the center of his songs, which often start with a simple, near-spoken line and organically resolve. The initial sparseness accents rhythm over melody and hints at Forster's emergence as a songwriter during the punk era. Forster's talent as a vocalist similarly aligns. While he often relies on an understated deadpan, he's able to express a full spectrum of feelings. Opener "Tell it Back to Me" is a sincere story where "we kissed on a bench." After a neutral beginning, Forster's delivery in "Such a Shame" gradually expresses the gruff disappointment of its title. "All of the Time" moves from its stolid opening line, "there's propaganda, and there's truth," to a furtive whisper in the third verse, to vulnerable and sweet wordless singing in the coda. "Foolish I Know" returns his jaded bluntness to the foreground, with lines like, "he's handsome and he's unattached."

Strawberries features some of Forster's most diverse arrangements, which retain the great instinct for space that dates back to his early Go-Betweens songs. Increasingly rich melodies grow out of "Breakfast on the Train" without having perceptibly shifted. The song rests delicately on Anna Ahman's droning keyboards, a strummed acoustic guitar, and brushes on a Magnus Olsson's snare. Underneath its sentimental lyrics, the title track creates a jazzy feel with hollowbody guitar and tambourine in the foreground. The overdriven guitars and pulsing drums on "All of the Time" would fit on Forster's early solo albums. Closing track "Diamonds" uses broad dynamics for dramatic effect, with Lina Langendorf's saxophone stressing the loud sections. © Steve Silverstein

Tracklist
1. Tell It Back To Me (3:34)
2. Good To Cry (2:27)
3. Breakfast On The Train (7:56)
4. Strawberries (3:23)
5. All Of The Time (4:20)
6. Such A Shame (5:34)
7. Foolish I Know (3:55)
8. Diamonds (5:29)