“Life itself is a thunderstorm… Life itself is brothers on walkie-talkies… It’s your dog at the backdoor, or a speeding car off in the distance. It’s a gentle voice on the radio. Mom smoking on the porch. The color of sunlight. It’s always right under your nose and so easy to miss. Often, a simple treasure.”
“I wanted to really make someone feel like they were inside my living room in 1993, but rearrange the furniture a bit. Something about combining that level of hyperreality with fairytales of devils and detectives weirdly felt like the truest way to immortalize these pieces of my family.”
-Trevor Powers (of Youth Lagoon) on Rarely Do I Dream
In Rarely Do I Dream, Youth Lagoon returns with his signature hauntingly beautiful sound, and this time we are given glimpses into the creative process and snapshots of a personal history. The album is peppered with samples from home VHS tapes, an artifact that Youth Lagoon’s Trevor Powers stumbled upon while rummaging through his parent’s basement in search of a vintage harmonica. Scanning through the tapes, Powers had a breakthrough of sorts. He says he felt “like a ghost in a lost memory” viewing these events as a third party, from the perspective of a camera through the television screen. He began creating a “musical cinematography” to go with the faded memories, scoring family videos of backyard baseball, western role-play, birthday parties, and road trips. The music in Rarely Do I Dream traces back to these buried moments locked in time.
It feels like a moment of re-centering for Youth Lagoon after having an identity crisis and calling it quits on the project nearly 9 years ago. “I had ended Youth Lagoon years ago because I lost who I was,” Powers says. “Then life jumped me in an alley and gave me a beating. That suffering changed my frequency. Now my ideas are a river. I can’t keep up.” Rarely Do I Dream is the second album released since Powers returned from hiatus, and it’s also the first project where he used the guitar as his primary writing tool, rather than the piano. While piano still exists heavily in the album, it serves to offer a playfulness while also anchoring the songs as it is his instrument of choice. It’s almost as if Powers composed the songs between two parts of himself – it is initially outlined using a fresh outlet, and then refined from another angle on the piano. This tangible, multi-pronged method mirrors the way Powers approached the family tapes, as seen in the album’s lyrics that seamlessly blend reality and fantasy.
It is apparent that Youth Lagoon has hit a full revival and artistic stride with this release. Songs like “Saturday Cowboy Matinee” present a new breath of life, while piano-driven songs like “My Beautiful Girl” bring a strong return to form. The album contains ebbs and flows that guide you through this journey. “Speed Freak” and “Gumshoe (Dracula From Arkansas)” stand out as some of the higher points on the album, with the BPM to back them up. In between these tracks, “Football” offers up an emotive piano recess telling the story of a burial. “Seersucker” immerses the listener in nostalgia with its VHS samples. “Lucy Takes a Picture” has an uplifting effect leading into “Perfect World” at the halfway point, which blesses the listener with arpeggiators and swells. Closing out the album is a meditative instrumental track aptly titled “Home Movies (1989-1993)”, an additional home movie montage of fleeting reverberations featuring Powers as an infant, family traditions, handcuffs, and The Sandlot. Closing out the album is the sound of the VHS tape being taken out of the player, a simple yet profound ending.
While the album is largely sentimental, Powers still reminds the listener of his ability to write metaphors alongside effortless rhyming sequences and cadences. Against the concrete VHS recordings, Powers wields another layer of imaginative storytelling and newfound inspiration to build compelling songs. Songs of a murder mystery featuring a dead body and a detective (“Gumshoe (Dracula From Arkansas)”) existing next to songs of a burial (“Football”) and a car accident (“Speed Freak”) show the range of inspiration in which Powers draws from. In Rarely Do I Dream, Youth Lagoon accesses multiple parts of himself as a person and as a creative. The result is a piece of work that sounds like an artist fully embracing the process and producing their most authentic work.
Rarely Do I Dream is a reflection on life. It’s finding an old jacket and replacing the buttons down the front or patching a hole on the elbow to give it a second life. It’s history, and understanding its impact on the present. It’s accepting that the current moment only exists because of what came before it.
Rarely Do I Dream transcends simple nostalgia. For Powers, it is a physical embodiment of time – the past, present, and future. It is the truest essence of the indefinite self, merging the experiences of the past with the ideas of the future. In the present, Youth Lagoon has painted a picture to expose the inner workings of his spirit whilst in the act of creating.
“The more I rewind the tapes of my life, the more I can hear the voice of my soul. This isn’t nostalgia. Life’s much more messy than that. It’s a dedication to all the parts of who I was, who I am, and who I’m going to be.”
-Trevor Powers (of Youth Lagoon) on Rarely Do I Dream
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Youth Lagoon Tour Dates
Thu. Mar. 27 – Spokane, WA @ District Bar @ Knitting Factory
Fri. Mar. 28 – Missoula, MT @ ZACC
Sat. Mar. 29 – Boise, ID @ Treefort Fest
Thu. Apr. 3 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater
Fri. Apr. 4 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
Sat. Apr. 5 – Victoria, BC @ Upstairs
Sun. Apr. 6 – Seattle, WA @ Crocodile
Tue. Apr. 8 – San Francisco, CA @ August Hall
Wed. Apr. 9 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent
Thu. Apr. 10 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah
Fri. Apr. 11 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress
Sat. Apr. 12 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
Mon. Apr. 14 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
Tue. Apr. 15 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk
Wed. Apr. 16 – Dallas, TX @ Deep Ellum Art Co
Fri. Apr. 18 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
Sat. Apr. 19 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade (Altar)
Sun. Apr. 20 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
Mon. Apr. 21 – Washington, DC @ The Atlantis
Tue. Apr. 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
Thu. Apr. 24 – Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw
Fri. Apr. 25 – Jersey City, NJ @ White Eagle Hall
Sat. Apr. 26 – New Haven, CT @ Space Ballroom
Sun. Apr. 27 – Boston, MA @ Middle East Downstairs
Tue. Apr. 29 – Montréal, QC @ La Sala Rossa
Thu. May 1 – Toronto, ON @ Axis
Fri. May 2 – Detroit, MI @ El Club
Sat. May 3 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
Sun. May 4 – Louisville, KY @ Whirling Tiger
Mon. May 5 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi
Wed. May 7 – Chicago, IL @ Outset
Thu. May 8 – Milwaukee, WI @ Vivarium
Fri May 9 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
Sat. May 10 – St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club
Mon. May 12 – St. Louis, MO @ Atomic Cowboy
Tue. May 13 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck
Thu. May 15 – Denver, CO @ Marquis
Fri. May 16 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Block Party
Tue. June 3 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
Wed. June 4 – Bordeaux, FR @ Le Rocher de Palmer
Sun. June 8 – Zurich, CH @ Exil
Tue. June 10 – Vienna, AT @ B72
Wed. June 11 – Prague, CZ @ MeetFactory
Thu. June 12 – Berlin, DE @ Frannz Club
Fri. June 13 – Cologne, DE @ Helios 37
Tue. June 17 – Paris, FR @ Le Trabendo
Wed. June 18 – Antwerp, BE @ Trix Club
Thu. June 19 – London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall
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