Send "The Depreciation Guild " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Back when the Deprecation Guild self-released their 2007 debut, In Her Gentle Jaws, they were best known for spiking their shimmering morsels of dream-pop with pixelated Famicom flourishes, a distinctive yet potentially distracting gimmick that the then-duo seamlessly enfolded into their sound. One Pains of Being Pure at Heart later-- the Slumberland sensation that features Guild frontman Kurt Feldman on drums, and utilizes Guild guitarist Christoph Hochheim on tour-- and the band that was around before POBPAH even formed is now better known for their membership in that group. The surprising success of the Guild's day job isn't the only thing that's changed between then and now. For one, the Guild is now a trio, with Christoph's twin brother Anton joining on drums. Also, instead of going the self-production route (as they did with Jaws), the new album was recorded with Telefon Tel Aviv's Joshua Eustis. While these changes are the most apparent, they're not the only things that separate the Guild's debut and Spirit Youth.It takes only a listen to the two released versions of Youth track "Dream About Me" to see what's different. The song was first released as a single in July 2009, a month before Kanine Records issued a remastered version of Jaws. That version of the song is in line with the sound of the Guild's debut. Right from the start of the track, the crunch and hiss of the 8-bit additions are put front and center, while the drum machine backing gives the track a stiff, brittle edge that undercuts its melodic ease. It's a wholly enjoyable pop tune, but the sound at times overwhelms the actual song. That's not the case with the version of the track available on Spirit Youth. Hochheim's less-exacting "real" drumming softens the song's blows, and Eustis (as he does throughout the album) ably integrates the one-up aspects of the tune-- they're not excised from the song, but the bloops and bleeps are focused on only for brief moments, and instead are interwoven into the background. Instead of being treated like the featured attraction, those sounds are just part of an ensemble that doles out its spotlight time wisely and sparingly....full text |
| Popmatters |
| On their striking debut LP, 2007’s self-released In Her Gentle Jaws, Brooklyn’s Depreciation Guild combined various sounds of the moment—eight-bit blips and beeps borrowed from the rising chiptune scene, fuzzed-out guitars from the shoegaze revivalists—to create a swirling brand of indie-pop all their own. In the intervening years, like-minded artists have seen their stars rise, most notably, Depreciation Guild frontman Kurt Feldman and guitarist Christoph Hochheim’s other band, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. In light of this fact, it would have been all too easy for the Guild to either ride the Pains’ coattails or lean closer toward a well-defined, trendy aesthetic (chiptune, shoegaze, chillwave, etc.). Yet on their sophomore effort, Spirit Youth, the Depreciation Guild largely choose to go their own way, with mixed results. On first listen, the most surprising thing about Spirit Youth is how much lower in the mix the programmed beats and melodies sit. Content to cede the title of most rock-oriented band in the chiptune scene to fellow New Yorkers Anamanaguchi, the Guild largely deemphasize their electronic underpinnings here, burying the hacked Nintendo cartridge that once figured so prominently in their songs (not to mention their interviews) under layers of guitar haze. Unlike the crunchy guitar tones favored by many shoegaze acts, however, Feldman and Hochheim employ layers of bright, jangly chords that wash gently over, rather than confront, the listener. Pair these calming guitars with Feldman’s androgynous coos and starry-eyed lyrics and you get an album that hews closer to the Field Mice school of post-C86 dream-pop than just about anything else since....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that the chief songwriter of the Depreciation Guild is Kurt Feldman, one fourth of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Both bands play gorgeous, buzzy keyboard melodies, laid thick with candied synthesizers and guitars, and both owe a lot of their charm to cutesy, rosy-cheeked nostalgia. They write songs about youth with a certain unspoiled genuineness, even if it's something as potentially cloying as a library love story or a nighttime fairy tale. But that's not to say that the Guild is derivative—at least in terms of modern 21st-century influence. In fact, the one thing that most sets the band apart from their similarly minded comrades is their allegiance to the '80s. While the Pains's self-titled debut was a very fuzzy, very '90s, very Slumberland affair, the Guild's latest effort, Spirit Youth, relies almost entirely on the retro-futuristic new-wave sounds that were popular 20 years ago. Highlights like "Crucify You" and "A Key Turns" sound like pop songs written specifically for a bygone era; but like M83's last two albums, these songs can stand on their own as a natural evolution of the musical ideas they're emulating. "Crucify You" muddies its vocals into a very modern-sounding blear. Spirit Youth might be a wistful record, but it's never unimaginative. The album certainly does wear its influences on its sleeve. It is the clear descendant of about three specific records in particular (Disintegration, Loveless, and Power, Corruption & Lies, for those of you keeping track), but it's one of those rare albums that manages to borrow just enough from its well-treaded sources to avoid charges of outright theft. That isn't to say that the band delivers anything truly new here, but they manage to present a paved-over musical tradition in a way we're not quite used to hearing....full text |
The Depreciation Guild lyrics
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