Drifter

After taking nearly a decade off, Young Prisms 2022 comeback album, Drifter, sounds like it could have been made directly following what looked to be at the time their swan song, 2012s In Between. The quartet capture the same twilight-glow sound, where the fragile beauty of overdriven guitars meets gently soaring vocals in a soft mix of shoegaze grind and dream pop haze. Its a nostalgic trip for sure; nothing here ties the album to the era in which its made. It could be from 2022, 2012, or 1992. One imagines the band locked the door of their studio, then went back years later to find the pedals were still humming away and all the settings on the mixing board were frozen in place. All the better to jump back in and create something timelessly pretty and achingly sad. Most of the songs here are melancholy and mumbled, with the vocals peeking out from behind the guitar wash, taking a quick look around and then heading back for cover. Bands have been doing this trick since the beginning of shoegaze, and Young Prisms are quite adept at nailing that feeling of being wary and weary at the same time. They often add a dash of beauty to the proceedings, which keeps songs like "Above Water" and "Melt Away" from being monochromatic dirges. They also arent afraid to kick away the gloom with studied violence (the keening electro-gaze "Violet") or sugar-lipped pop ("Honeydew"). These are facts that fans of the band already knew and things for those just discovering them to embrace. Just like when the group packed away their gear in the early 2010s, there are plenty of bands walking this fine line between noise and melody; just like then, there are few that do it as well as Young Prisms do. ~ Tim Sendra