The Sourdrops - Oh So Sour
Artist: The Sourdrops
Author: Sarah
Date: 05/03/2025
Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
On their Neocities page, the Sourdrops have a list of inspirations which includes Talulah Gosh, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Shop Assistants, among others. But you don't really need a written list of inspirations to figure that out, all you need to do is listen to Oh So Sour. From start to finish, it's a whole lot of cute little shambling pop songs played at breakneck pace. For about 30 seconds, Oh So Sour has me convinced that I'm about to hear the next great twee pop album. In that time, we get 22 seconds of deceptively gentle bells in "Intro", followed by a really cool bass intro to "Postcard". Unfortunately, from there it becomes apparent that this is a new band still finding their footing.
In general, I'd say that the Sourdrops are about 90% of the way there instrumentally. They know how they want to sound, and they know how to sound that way, but there's just some small piece that I can't even figure out how to describe missing. That's a pretty good place to be, I think, when you've already got a strong identity to your music from day one. Vocally, however, they've still got a ways to go.
In this kind of twee, it's not uncommon for the vocals to clash a bit with the music, but the Sourdrops' singers have a tentativeness about them that misses the mark. Where they intend for the vocals to sound a bit tossed-off, they instead all too often sound like when you do a song at karaoke but don't quite remember how the verses go.
When it all comes together, like on "Greenwood Cemetery", it's easy to see a future for this band. It presents what sounds like their most confident vocal performance (or at least the one that's least buried in the mix), and gets a lot noisier (in my favorite, Psychocandy-style, stabbing feedback-y way) than you'd expect a twee pop band to get. I don't think they're going to be the next Talulah Gosh, but they could easily reach or exceed someone like the Rosehips or even the Popguns. In five years, when they've got an album coming out with Slumberland, remember you heard about them here first.