AMS Album of the Week 16

Youth Lagoon consists of a single 23 year old man: Trevor Powers. His debut, The Year of Hibernation, was released back in 2011 and still stands as by far my favourite album to emerge from the stampede of lo-fi singer songwriters of recent years. Rarely going beyond a minimalist combination of reverb drenched keyboards, processed beats and dreamy vocals it was a haunting, beautiful, perfectly formed slice of dream pop. Wondrous Bughouse is a far more complicated beast. Here you’ll find layers, textures and a wide variety of influences. It’s an exciting development and makes for a fascinating listen.

‘Through Mind and Back’ is a great little intro that showcases the variety of techniques and sounds that is the rest of the album. Next up is ‘Mute’. ‘Mute’ is unbelievable. Layers and layers of synths create an incredible dreamy textured soundscape of pure wonderment. It’s definitely my track of the year so far. The rest obviously can’t quite live up to the greatness of ‘Mute’ (I could probably talk about how good this track is for the remainder of this review...) but there are some other fantastic tracks. ‘Pelican Man’ draws heavily on 60s psychedelic rock but feels more like an update than homage. Shoegaze indebted ‘The Bath‘ is a swirling vortex of sound set to sparse drums and it’s great. ‘Dropla’ is much cheerier than I’m used to hearing from Youth Lagoon, and is an exciting diversion halfway through the record. In fact, pretty much all of the tracks here are of a really high standard. I often find that heavily textured psychedelic stuff gets a bit dreary, but here only ‘Sleep Paralysis’ has me considering the skip button.

Powers has obviously tried to steer his sound away from the minimalist dream pop that he made his own on his debut, which is understandable, even admirable. Sadly, as a result, Wondrous Bughouse feels a lot less like his. There are several tracks here that sound a little bit too much like popular alternative bands. You’ll hear Animal Collective, Tame Impala, Grizzly Bear etc. It feels a little like he’s trying his hand at various band’s sounds to see which one he likes the best. That said, his fantastic songwriting still draws this through as a great album, so whilst I might recommend The Year of Hibernation a little more enthusiastically, I’d still say this is one you should definitely have on your shopping list. Also, listen to ‘Mute’, it’s incredible.