Spirit Youth

Whenever a new sound appears on the pop-music scene, its first wave is invariably followed shortly thereafter by a second phalanx of bands who take whatever had been new or innovative about the originators and apply it to more conventional pop-song structures. The Sex Pistols lead inexorably to the Buzzcocks, the Human League of "Being Boiled" to the Human League of "Don't You Want Me." Around 1990, the original shoegazers -- your Cocteau Twins, your My Bloody Valentine -- were joined by new bands such as Lush or The Sundays, who mixed the requisite heavily-reverbed guitars, chilly effect washes, and diffident vocals with more of an eye for melody and hooks. The Depreciation Guild's second album suggests we've reached the same point with the current shoegaze revival. Dropping the 8-bit videogame pretensions of their debut and adding guitarist Christoph Hochheim's twin brother Anton on live drums, singer-songwriter Kurt Feldman reveals a hitherto buried level of melodic craft. As a result, instantly-memorable tracks like "Crucify You" and "A Key Turns" are among the first songs in the entire newgaze scene that are genuinely as compelling as the two-decades-past tunes they're inspired by, and "Through the Snow" is one of 2010's best pop songs so far.