In China, the “Strawberry Generation” is synonymous with the West’s crop of millennials — it’s a blanket term draped over the country’s 20-to-30-somethings who bruise as physically and emotionally as overripe fruit.
In Rhode Island, the Strawberry Generation is a twee-pop quintet as sulked-out and squishy as its namesake implies. Their latest Bandcamp upload, “These Days,” is a twinkly ode to these fragarian times: fraught with hyper-awareness of self-image, a doubtful future looming on the horizon, and a veil of intentional hope worn to combat it.
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“See the plates shifting / Hear the tables drifting / Feel the weight of someone missing their mom,” sings Valerie Zhu.
Here the Strawberries sound like Cranberries, their sugars breaking down into sour t(w)ang, their tendrils reaching for the light leaking through the overcast, Zhu’s syllables spilling out like a conversation catching a train of thought, planet-sized metaphors dwarfed by the mundane, snares leaving muffled prints in the wet soil.
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“These Days” will appear on a six-song EP titled Punnet, slated to drop in September. If you often feel like a berry bulbous and juicy enough to drop from the vine, keep a chloroplast open for new tunes down the pipeline.
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