Young Prisms formed at tiny Mills College before moving to San Francisco in the late 2000s. In only a short time after forming, the S.F. noise pop group Young Prisms became a pretty hot commodity in the indie rock world. The five-piece group plays a fiercely loud and sneakily melodic brand of retro-shoegaze that also shows traces of noise pop scrappiness and neo-psych dreaminess. Early on, the band's lineup consisted of Jason Hendardy on guitar and vocals, Jordan Silbert on drums, Matt Allen on guitar and vocals, Stefanie Hodapp on vocals, and Giovanni Betteo on bass and vocals. After garnering some notice around town for their live set, bloggers and small labels began noticing them, too. Their first records were a split cassette with Worldwide Computer God and a CD EP on Weedza Records. Soon after, in late 2009, white-hot label Mexican Summer put out a self-titled 12" single by the band. They recorded singles and EPs for some of the most impressive taste-making labels around at the time (Mexican Summer, Transparent). This led to a batch of split 7" singles in 2010 with Small Black (on Big Love Records from Japan), Weekend (on Transparent from the U.K.), and Mathemagic (on Atelier Ciseaux from France). In 2010 Young Prisms made a deal with U.S. label Kanine to release their first full-length album.

Friends for Now came out in January of 2011. The album is loaded with massive-sounding guitars that gather in squalling walls of noise, yet have a lightness about them that helps keep things from getting too heavy. Through the haze come the vocals, snaking through the songs to cast spells when the boys in the band sing or bring an icy calm when Stefanie Hodapp takes over. The blend of vocals and guitar, sound and feel, is pretty close to perfect. The songs themselves have a lot of sudden twists and turns, shifting tempos and dynamics at just the right moments for maximum effect. There aren't any singalong choruses or giant hooks that reach out and grab you, though; it's more the kind of album that slowly works its way into your brain. You have to hand it to the tastemakers; they knew what they were talking about with Young Prisms. You'd be hard-pressed to find better noise pop/rock than this in 2011. Sometime after the album's release, the band parted ways with Hendardy and added Ashley Thomas on guitar and vocals.

The group's second album, In Between, was produced by Monte Vallier (who worked with fellow noise poppers Weekend) and released by Kanine in March of 2012. Right away the band combines Slowdive's slow-motion crawl, My Bloody Valentine's impenetrable fortress of warped guitars, Ride's youthful energy, the sometimes bitter bite of the Telescopes, and a tiny hint of the loping classic pop songcraft of some of the label's early finds like the Jasmine Minks. Throw in a touch of Mazzy Star moroseness, a hint of Lush's mystical harmonizing, and the smallest bit of Black Tambourine's squall and you have the makings of the perfect Frankenstein's monster of a retro shoegaze band. You also have a band that could easily be dismissed as a mere imitator, with nothing to add to the noise pop/shoegaze template. Sort of like a modern-day Drop Nineteens or Smashing Orange. The group's first album dodged being slagged by being so full of energy and noise (and a pleasing Sonic Youth influence) that criticizing it would have been like yelling at a cute little puppy. On In Between they ditch any SY trappings and go full shoegaze, removing much of the energy and dialing the tempos down to mid. It works really well, allowing the band to create a mood of wistful, well-produced melancholy that builds and builds until the album ends in a swirl of barely expressed emotion and guitar clatter. The songs flow together like teardrops, running together to form a pool of melodic sadness that is never broken by a smile or a big chorus. To that end, In Between is more of an early Slowdive record as the male and female vocals intertwine, the guitars fill the air like giant clouds, and the melancholy haze never lifts. Only "Better Days" threatens to lift the mood, but that worry is soon tamped down by the haunting female vocals. It's impressive that Young Prisms can be so gloomy and monochromatic without getting bogged down in it; instead, they create a kind of magic out of the gloom that grows with each listen. What of the imitator charges this time out? They sidestep them by writing songs as well and creating moods just as powerfully as their forerunners did. Slowdive wish their early records were this strong, Lush never made a record this good (until they became Brit-poppers), and the Telescopes never quite got their medication levels this balanced. Alan McGee will never restart Creation, and if he did he'd probably sign Oasis imitators instead, but don't tell Young Prisms that. Let them live in their little shoegaze dream world if it means they keep cranking out records as good as In Between.