Spirit Youth by The Depreciation Guild

Spirit Youth, the album that rewrites just about every assumption about Brooklyn’s most promising dream-pop band. For starters, the Depreciation Guild is not Slowdive’s second-coming. While Feldman and guitarist Christoph Hochheim also play in the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, they founded The Depreciation Guild two years prior to the Pains’ formation. The two bands complement one another, with Pains teetering on the twee side of things and The Depreciation Guild building its very own blend of 8-bit beats, clanging chords and heady hooks.

We put more of an emphasis on songs than textures,” adds guitarist Christoph Hochheim. In other words, there’s more to a Depreciation Guild record than disembodied vocals and distorted guitars— three-dimensional details like the pinpoint percussion of Christoph’s twin brother Anton and the fluttering effects of the trio’s honorary ‘fourth member’, its vintage Famicom system.