Everything you need to know about Strawberry Switchblade, the Scottish duo of Rose McDowall and Jill Bryson, is right there in the name. The group, who grew out of the late '70s Glasgow punk scene paired brightly-colored, synth-driven new wave melodies with lyrics that often spoke of sadness and loss. That polarity between light and darkness became even more apparent in the group’s acrimonious dissolution in 1986, just five years after they started. MacDowall had always nursed an interest in the occult, but over the course of the duo's brief run, it deepened, moving beyond a childlike fascination with fairies into the realm of straight-up black magic (in one oft-repeated story, she was so furious with a bad note during the recording of "Let Her Go", she allegedly stared at the tape machine and willed it to burst into flames). Her curiosity only intensified after she and her husband fell in with Genesis P-Orridge, which led to even darker pursuits—in an extensive interview, Bryson claims McDowall developed an obsession with Nazi history, going so far as to hang a Nazi flag in her apartment. While McDowall emphatically denies the claim, her collaborations with suspect artists like Boyd Rice and Death in June in the intervening years seem unwise at best.
Fortunately, none of these matters surface on Cut With the Cake Knife, which McDowall recorded in various locations around the UK in the 1980s, shortly after Strawberry Switchblade’s breakup. Instead, the album’s 11 songs follow the same blueprint that made McDowall’s previous group so bewitching, pairing bleak—and, at times, violent—lyrics to the kind of sugary music that might soundtrack a particularly rambunctious children’s show. Drum machines whirr and rattle, keyboards blink like buggy Lite Brites, and McDowall’s somber alto winds its way through the center like a serpent cutting a path through cellophane Easter grass. On the opening track "Tibet", she seems to be wrestling with Strawberry Switchblade’s breakup, sighing "I don’t want you to go/ But can’t ask you to stay/ I wish I could change your mind/ But wishes sometimes die." The music that surrounds it is a kind of ersatz calypso, with charmingly chintzy rhythms and gurgling keyboards, but the vocal melody is so assured and clear-eyed that the song never feels cloying or saccharine. "Sixty Cowboys" dabbles in the kind of synthetic country that the Magnetic Fields would master on Charm of the Highway Strip, with brittle keyboards filling in for banjos and McDowall’s lonesome voice floating upward like campfire smoke. And while the title "Crystal Nights" takes on an ominous meaning in light of the allegations about McDowall’s hobbies, the song itself harbors no questionable subject matter. Instead, it depicts her in bed daydreaming about her lover as keyboards spiral like fireflies around her.
While its ingredients are undeniably basic—all of the songs are built from a few period-appropriate keyboards and chugging drum machines, and that’s mostly it—what makes Cake Knife so consistently endearing is how effortless it all sounds. That the only bum note is a chirpy cover of "Don’t Fear the Reaper", which comes off like the theme music to an old Commodore 64 game, speaks to how strong the rest of the record is. On Cake Knife, McDowall has created a kind of aural Candy Land, one where she can break off vanilla bark from Jujyfruit trees while she sings about death and despair. The title track—which was originally intended to be a Strawberry Switchblade song—takes that m.o. to its logical extreme. While a comically cartoonish bass and hyperactive synths jitter and pop around her, McDowall beckons a lover closer before announcing in its deliriously euphoric chorus, "I will take you by the hand and lead you/ To my sunny side and I will/ Cut you with the cake knife/ Right between the eyes." In McDowall’s world, cake and chaos go hand in hand. She’s the witch at the door of the gingerbread house, beckoning you inside.
