2.5 Stars
Ambient/Rock
Chillwave or shoegaze? Young Prisms decides to take the middle road when
paving the way towards their debut album — chillgaze.
The band’s obtuse sound finds guitars, distortion, drums and hazy vocals
clashing against each other relentlessly throughout Friends For Now.
Forcing these two ideas together works brilliantly at the beginning of the
album, but the excited creation runs out of oomph as the possibilities turn
from endless to limited.
When a band combines two genres, both of which attract more cult followers
than a concentrated fan base, they give themselves a narrow window to
transmit their tunes. The persistent sparring of competing genres ends in a
stalemate with one declaring victory over its opposition in each song, but
the small wins in battle prove minimal in the larger genre war.
The celestial, chillwave vocals of Steff Hodapp find themselves altitude
sick over the grounded garage rock the rest of the band makes. The
shoe-gazing guitarist and the flighty maiden are not a match made in heaven
— more so a week-long, late-night romance that never blossoms, and it’s
obviously incompatable.
Songs like “If You Want To” and “Eleni” capture the vocal essence of
chillwave and the lawnmower-stenches of garage rock. Chillwave may have
claimed victory by glossing over the entire composition of the last track
but no clear winner can be declared for the album.
Friends For Now would make a good chaser to a strong chillwave spirit, good
enough to momentarily mask the lasting buzz a band such as Neon Indian or
Wild Nothing enduces.
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