Following on from the arresting 'Dropla' released earlier in the year, Trevor Powers aka Youth Lagoon has released another track from his forthcoming follow-up album to 2011's 'The Year Of Hibernation'. The album, for those of you that don't read pitchfork, is to be titled 'Wondrous Bughouse', and so far is signalling a big league shift for Youth Lagoon.
Like 'Dropla', new track 'Mute' is encouragingly intelligible vocally, marking a change from the reverb Powers often hid behind on 'The Year Of Hibernation'. It is this added clarity that should make Youth Lagoon a pretty big deal this year, he's certainly got the emotional songwriting chops required for indie adoration, and with 'Mute', instrumental ambition is accomplished too, most impressively with the song's Brian Eno like scale and sprawling climax, filled with warped synths and mesmeric guitar lines.
Toby McCarron
The Year of Hibernation is a fitting title for this, Youth Lagoon’s debut release. It implies rest and calm. It’s also suggestive of someone storing, withholding that which they have collected until they are ready to release themselves, renewed and revitalised. The Year Of Hibernation is masterful record, each track imbued with a slow-building power reminiscent of The National. This drive is even more astonishing considering that Youth Lagoon is a lone 22 year old Boise, Idaho native by the name of Trevor Powers.
The album is only 8 tracks in length, but this never gives a feeling of incompletion to proceedings. The record is shrouded in a gloopy lo-fi fuzz that restrains the chest beating drum machine lines and snaking guitarwork until the moment is right and they are unleashed. Power’s tremulous falsetto becomes an instrument itself, chasing through the songs like a child with a torch, in awe of the world he can make with his mind.
Possibly the most startling aspect of the record is it’s sparseness. The layers of instruments give an overpowering effect but Powers never allows it to swamp the elements at it’s core. It is ostensibly a chest-beating, “it’s me and against the world and I don’t give a fuck” kind of record, but it’s rawness has been sweetened and contained. Any sense of delusion or indulgence has been purified out, leaving only proclamations that ring true and clear.
As an album, it’s a marvellous piece of work but as a debut, it’s nothing less than miraculous
8/10
By Ned Powley
