It doesn’t take long to figure out what Wisp is trying to do on If Not Winter. For me, that’s the album’s biggest strength. A lot of shoegaze records ask you to sit in the blur for a while before the songs separate themselves. This one gets to the point faster. The hooks show up early, the vocals stay out front, and even when the guitars pile on, the mix rarely turns to mush. In 2026, that kind of clarity can feel almost contrarian for a style that usually gets praised for obscuring itself. I don’t think If Not Winter is rewriting the rules of shoegaze, but I do think it understands something important: if the melody lands on first pass, you come back for the texture later.
Hooks first, haze second
The album works best when you hear it as pop shoegaze with discipline. Wisp clearly knows the appeal of the genre’s blur, but she also knows when to keep the vocal line clean enough to carry the song. That choice makes a real difference across these 12 tracks. Sword, the opener, is only 146 seconds long, and that economy matters. It doesn’t drift; it arrives. Around the first minute, the guitars thicken and push outward, but the song still reads as a song rather than a wash of effects. That’s a thread running through the record. The haze is there, the weight is there, but the melodies are doing the heavy lifting. That’s probably why comparisons to beabadoobee’s pop-facing side make some sense, even if the guitar treatment is much closer to shoegaze proper. The album’s accessibility is not a compromise. It’s the whole design.
Wisp keeps the blur under control
The production is what sells that design. Plenty of records can stack reverb and distortion; fewer can do it without smearing the edges off everything else. Breathe onto me is one of the better examples here. At 237 seconds, it has enough room to sprawl a little, but the arrangement stays organized. The guitars feel wet and heavy while the vocal stays centered, which keeps the chorus from dissolving. Save me now does something similar in a tighter frame. It hits in 182 seconds, and that directness helps the record a lot. Rather than treating shoegaze as an excuse to drift, Wisp treats it like a frame for concise songwriting. That’s where the Slowdive and Nothing comparisons become useful. You can hear the dreamy glide associated with Slowdive, but there’s also a firmer push underneath that recalls Nothing’s more grounded weight. The result is polished, yes, but not lightweight.
The best songs are built for replay
If the album has a case to make for itself, it’s in the individual songs. Sword, Breathe onto me, Save me now, Guide light, and Black swan all make their point quickly, and that matters more than any broader conversation about scene placement. Guide light is especially telling. Several write-ups have pointed to the mechanical whirr in that track, and that detail really does stick out. It gives the song a little grit under the glow, and it also makes the My Bloody Valentine comparison feel earned instead of automatic. Black swan and the title track both benefit from the same instinct: don’t overcomplicate the payoff. Wisp is good at getting to a melodic peak without overworking the arrangement. That can make the album immediately replayable, even when the songs share a similar vocal approach from track to track.
The catch is that consistency can start to flatten the album
That same consistency is also where my main reservation comes in. A lot of these songs are good in isolation, but the full-length can blur at the seams. Not because the production is muddy, but because the approach is so steady. The vocal tone stays in a narrow lane, and the songwriting often aims for the same kind of payoff. So while I like the album, I also understand why some listeners hear it as very strong craft rather than a sharply individual statement. Wisp wears her influences openly. Slowdive, Nothing, and My Bloody Valentine are all in the room, and so is the current wave of artists like quannnic, Novulent, and Zeruel. That doesn’t sink the record at all. It just means If Not Winter sometimes feels more like a skilled synthesis of shoegaze history than a debut with its own unmistakable fingerprint.
Why the debut still lands
Even with that limitation, I keep coming back to how intentional this record sounds. The research around it repeatedly frames If Not Winter as a debut, and it carries itself like one in the best way: focused, self-assured, and eager to prove it can deliver a full set of songs instead of a promising idea. That matters. Wisp isn’t fumbling toward a style here; she knows the playbook and executes it with real confidence. I’d rather hear a debut this clean and this purposeful than one that reaches for novelty without the songs to back it up. If Not Winter may not be the kind of shoegaze album that redraws the map, but it does something harder than people often admit: it makes a familiar style feel easy to return to. I’d put it at a solid 7.5/10, strongest when its hooks hit fast and a little less distinct when the album settles into one mood for too long.
If you want a shoegaze record that keeps its melodies visible through the fuzz, give it a listen.
Tracklist
- Sword 2:26
- Breathe onto me 3:57
- Save me now 3:02
- After dark 2:55
- Guide light 3:48
- Latvia
- Yellow roses
- Halo
- Mesmerized
- Grey sky
- Alley cat
- If Not Winter
