Make way for Garden Pop as Strawberry Guy gives us his debut album ‘Sun Outside My Window’
We spoke to the eclectic musician behind Strawberry Guy about fitting the sound of an orchestra inside his bedroom and bringing the outside in on the record
Photo: Emma Lavelle
To listen to Sun Outside My Window is to walk through the countryside, each track a different vista: a wide-open field, a babbling brook or dappled woodland reminiscent of the brushstrokes of Impressionist art that helped inspire the record.
Indeed, Alex Stephens — aka Strawberry Guy — refers to his music as Impressionist itself and fittingly, the album artwork is Monet’s Meadow at Giverny (1886). He gushes that his mum is a big fan of the artist and that he grew up surrounded by his work. Alex’s mum wanted one of her children to be musical, so he started playing the piano aged four and hasn’t stopped since. We can be thankful she did.
Sun Outside My Window has a wonderous, instrumentally rousing sound that envelops you in an affectionate haze punctuated with delicate vocals evoking apricity, the warmth of a sunny day.
“I had this idea about squeezing an orchestra into my room. It had a comical element at first but then I thought, no, I can actually do this. I’m going to try to make as big a sound as possible,” he explains. The record subverts the expectations of bedroom pop, filling the room with strings and keys and opening the window to allow the outside and all of its sunlight to pour in. The result? Garden pop, if you will.
Discussing the title track of the album, he tells me how he remembers looking outside the window during summer in lockdown, the sun beaming: “It just never fails to make you feel better. Sunshine is nature’s way of cheering us up when we’re feeling a bit low.”
South Wales born and Liverpool based, Strawberry Guy has made an album reflective of a real-life fairy tale, far removed from any Disney saccharin and in tune with nature’s power to affect our emotions with tracks like As We Bloom having the listener imagine the time-lapse of a flower doing exactly that.
It’s the landscape of Wales that really inspires him, Alex shares: “I wanted to make an ode to these scenes of natural beauty,” explaining that he sees the Impressionist ideals surrounding the natural world realised in the Welsh countryside.
The album breathes, capturing a rural landscape between the chord progressions and providing space for the listener amongst the many instruments that now encapsulate Strawberry Guy’s own version of lo-fi indie.
There’s a 70s sound to the record, at times reminiscent of Nick Drake but with added serotonin, whilst tracks like Company echo his earlier work and songs like Without You. I ask Alex how he thinks his sound has evolved since his first EPs: “I’m really happy with my past tracks but I do feel I was restricted in the synth-pop, bedroom pop genre. With this album, I wanted to push the boundaries a bit more.”
The title track Sun Outside My Window has moments where it’s evocative of Mac Demarco’s Another One, particularly the demos, whilst the vocals at the start of Believing wouldn’t sound out of place on the Bombay Bicycle Club album Flaws. But the record isn’t derivative and instead channels all these influences, implicitly, into the distinct sound of Strawberry Guy.
White Lies as the closing track could be heard to subvert the fairy tale feel of the work and I wondered if this was a deliberate choice to not subscribe to an obvious ‘happy ending’. “I think for me, the song at the start is about me lying about my emotions but then, at the end, when all the instruments come in, that’s when the feeling of ‘everything’s going to be alright’ arrives. It’s a hopeful song in the end. The instruments for me are that hope,” he explains.
When asked if he always had a strong idea of the tracklist or it had evolved over time, he reflects that he had “a clear idea of the order from the start and it came quite naturally.” Alex continues, laughing, “Piano players seem to like sad songs, and so I was conscious of the fact that I wanted a whirlwind of emotions where there are really sad, intimate parts and then also faster and uplifting moments.”
Having joined The Orielle’s in 2018 as a keyboardist and then signing with independent label Melodic Records for the release of solo endeavours a year later, I was interested to hear how the process of making music differed. “Working on your own gives you a freedom to only work when you’re genuinely feeling the feelings you’re writing and singing about,” Alex clarifies, “You’re not tied down to schedules and working around other people’s time so for me, the results feel more genuine.”
So, what’s next for Strawberry Guy? Only a US tour next year. Is he apprehensive? It will be the first time he’s not only performed since Covid but will be debuting this new work. “I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to play live,” he begins, “and the venues I’ll be playing after lockdown are going to be a lot bigger than what I was playing before. I’ve never been to America, and it feels weird that the first time I’m going is to headline shows,” Alex laughs.
Tiktok has played its part in Strawberry Guy’s rising popularity over the past year and a half, with Mrs Magic being used in over 70k videos to date. But Alex wasn’t always a natural himself on the social media platform. “I didn’t get it. It’s quite noisy and chaotic and I felt like a grandad on it so I deleted it and then a few months later I’m getting all these messages saying that one of my songs has blown up on there.”
“I’ve never really tried to ‘make it big’ so the whole thing has been quite overwhelming.”
There’s going to be many new fans in the crowd of his upcoming shows because of the song (which has hit nearly 54 million streams), that’s for sure. “I’m excited to get on stage and play with my band, they’re all my best friends and I love them to bits,” says Alex. “I’ve got a new mellotron keyboard and I’m really looking forward to using that live, especially for Sun Outside My Window and When Morning Comes.”
Sun Outside My Window is an emotionally varied, but ultimately joyous body of work carving a space for Strawberry Guy’s big natural sound. I, for one, am glad that in his upcoming shows he’ll be able to see how much people enjoy this new ‘Garden Pop’, not just through numbers on a screen (which was all lockdown could afford) but on the faces of fans in real-time.
Sun Outside My Window is out now.