{"id":620667,"date":"2026-06-04T11:21:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T11:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/620667\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T11:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T11:21:12","slug":"midrift-silhouette-review-a-promising-debut-building-on-big-influences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/620667\/","title":{"rendered":"Midrift \u2013 \u2018Silhouette\u2019 review: a promising debut building on big influences"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Francisco trio Midrift<\/a> are one of alternative music\u2019s fastest-rising names. Arriving at a time where shoegaze is at its commercial peak \u2013 and where almost anything drenched in reverb and emotional ambiguity gets labelled as such \u2013 \u2018Silhouette\u2019 finds Midrift stepping directly into that conversation. But as the album buckles beneath the weight of its influences, it\u2019s sometimes difficult to tell exactly what the band themselves are trying to say.<\/p>\n

The group have already amassed millions of streams through viral singles like \u2018Twin Flames\u2019 and \u2018Unrequited\u2019, building momentum through support slots with Fleshwater<\/a> and Angel Du$t<\/a>, and even landed on the NME 100 earlier this year<\/a>. What makes their rise more striking is their age. Vocalist and guitarist Gus Mehrkam and brothers Manoa (bass) and Kai Neukermans (drums) are still barely out of high school, yet already carry themselves with an undeniable maturity. Their grisly sound leans fully into that tension; teenage angst pulses through Midrift\u2019s blend of emo<\/a>, shoegaze and post-hardcore<\/a> like they\u2019re dragging themselves through decades of bruised relationships and emotional fallout.<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s strongest moments come on \u2018Over Anything\u2019 and \u2018Safe And Sound\u2019. The former balances atmospheric build-ups with explosive release and genuine grit, while \u2018Safe And Sound\u2019 pairs intricate Midwest emo-style guitars with painfully earnest lines like, \u201cif anything is real \/ then tell me how to feel\u201d. Together, they feel like the clearest examples of Midrift escaping imitation and fully carving out their own style. Elsewhere, \u2018Not Far Gone\u2019 captures teenage frustration through buoyant riffs and a fragmented vocal sample that make the track feel deeply personal. Closing track \u2018If You Have To Go\u2019 is genuinely devastating, ending the record in a blur of exhausted, yelled vocals and dragging instrumentation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

There are clear echoes of Basement<\/a> in Midrift\u2019s chugging low-end and dense guitar work, while their anxious vocal outbursts feel indebted to Title Fight\u2019s sound. At times, the band sound like they\u2019ve absorbed an archive of 2010s alternative music and repackaged it for the TikTok era. The challenge now, though, is if they can carve out an identity distinct enough to escape the shadow of those influences.<\/p>\n

Still, even if \u2018Silhouette\u2019 slips into a predictable rhythm of mid-tempo chugs and explosive payoffs, the album feels significant. Midrift aren\u2019t reinventing shoegaze so much as pushing it to the forefront of Gen Z listening habits. For a band this young, the album\u2019s emotional immediacy already places them far ahead of many of their peers, and for that they deserve their flowers.<\/p>\n

Details<\/p>\n

\"silhouette<\/p>\n

Record label: Self-released
\nRelease date: June 5, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco trio Midrift are one of alternative music\u2019s fastest-rising names. Arriving at a time where shoegaze is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[25065,96,3583,128,3584,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-620667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-alternative","tag-entertainment","tag-indie","tag-music","tag-rock","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}