I swear – our strawberries have flourished this year because they’ve had Pippa Blundell to sing to them whilst we garden. Her earthy voice has nourished the soil and made it thick and rich – I can feel the difference as I press in my fingertips.
The peppy strings and percussion of ‘crave’ and delicate drums and staccato vocals of ‘wasted’ have pulled and stretched the runners of our strawberries outward to multiply and thrive, creating more daughter plants than any year before.
Sun rays have lasered in on the deep green leaves, expanding their surface, intensifying their colour, by following the precision present in every element of ‘will to take’. Similarly, I credit the quick escalation through whites and pinks to fleshy, succulent red to the simply divine ‘instrumental with james’.
Our strawberries have filled out, plumped up with juice and sugary goodness in response to the rapture replete in ‘common thread’. Blundell sings of ‘sunshine’, ‘harmony’, and the beauty in a morning of little joys, mirroring how I feel every time I see a new fruit ready to pick, cut, and share.
My – and my strawberries’ – favourite is the final track, ‘love her’. It is Blundell’s voice at its most yearning and motley, acting like the leading dance partner, pushing and pulling the music close and away, close and away. The song even refers to ‘sprouting’ and slipping ‘beneath the soil’.
If this is what the album can do to little fruits, imagine what it’ll do to you.
Common Thread will be released 6th June via Bridge the Gap
