Sorry for the slight skip in posts. I was busy planning a theme for this month and then kinda spaced out for a bit.

As mentioned last time, the Wild Strawberries split their time between the hospitals and the recording studio; wife Roberta Carter Harrison was a physiotherapist before her two kids arrived, and husband Ken Harrison was still spending part of his week as a doctor at a Toronto mental health clinic after the band’s 2000 independent release, Twist. Since then, the family moved out of the big city to quieter climes and have shown every sign of settling down—though with music still in their blood, as 2005’s Deformative Years and numerous collaborations with German dance producer (!) ATB suggest. So much beautiful noise coming out of such a quiet little town.

“Fine” is a jazzy little number from 1995’s Heroine, the album that gave the Wild Strawberries their biggest audience to date. It’s odd to think about it now, considering how stratified radio is now, but back in 1995 in Toronto it was possible to hear “Heroine” playing on the retiree-favourite adult contemporary station, CHFI, and breakout single “I Don’t Want to Think About It” on the alt-rock channel across the dial, the Edge. Most of the Strawberries’ material fell somewhere in between the two extremes, with the Harrisons specializing in a pleasant, bright style of Canadian alternative pop that sounded like it could’ve been just as comfortable on AM radio.

Though the Wild Strawberries haven’t gone so far as to pull an Everything But The Girl, electronic elements did creep into the band’s sound after Heroine; 1998’s Quiver saw the duo try to jump onto the Garbage/Republica bandwagon forming at the time, and ever since they’ve been incorporating keyboards, samples and drum loops into their music. And though the grittier, louder direction was an obvious one after the success of “I Don’t Want To Think About It”’s tentative steps towards alt-rock, it’s still easy to miss the bright, burbly sounds of “Everything That Rises” or “Pretty Lip.” But that’s what back catalogues are for.