Picture one of our greatest living singer-songwriters in a kitchen.
He is on holidays, he's just had a swim.
His wife is out on the beach, and he finds himself faced with a bowl of irresistible strawberries. They're meant to be shared, of course, but their taste is “out of the ordinary”, so he just can't help himself.
Minutes later all of the delicious fruit are gone, but there's the germ of a song as the phrase “Someone ate all the strawberries” has just popped into Robert Forster's mind, sounding “so weird, but normal”.
Thankfully, he has taken his guitar with him.
As the story goes, his wife Karin Bäumler not only forgave her husband, she actually joined him on a duet of what was to become the title song to his ninth solo album.
“What can ordinary be?” is its wistful question, befitting the life's work of Robert Forster who has perfected the art of being outré in a least ostentatious way, from his time in the Go-Betweens to his solo career, now spanning almost three decades, interrupted only by the old band's reformation in 2000 which ended with his songwriting partner Grant McLennan's untimely death in 2006.