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Created in the grimy rooms of their apartment located above a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, Friends For Now is the first full-length release from Young Prisms (@youngprisms). After hearing their previous EPs, I was more than eager to grab a copy of the LP.

After listening to the first track “Friends For Now”, I wasn’t completely sold on Young Prisms. That first impression, however, was soon to change. While “If You Want To” keeps the ghostly, psychedelic layering that makes “Friends For Now” an interesting listen, it expands upon the element of brash, lo-fi guitar tones, bringing this track, and others like “In Your Room” and “Breathless” to an entirely different level of musicianship. While I’m not always a huge fan of lo-fi sound in general, there’s simply a texture to these songs that give them a substance above what I sometimes overlook.

Overall, Young Prisms, aren’t pushing barriers or experimenting with a new sound, but what they do, they do extremely well. The delicate vocals combined with the harsh guitar tones make for a fantastic contrast that force the listener to straddle somewhere between calm and chaos. For a debut LP, Friends For Now, certainly makes me curious as to what this band is capable of crafting in the future.