Category Archives: indie
What does it mean when you can’t make out the words to a song? At seven, I couldn’t grasp a word of Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’. But that didn’t mean that the line about kicking dirt in someone’s eye—the lyrics to which I understood much later—didn’t feel all kinds of awesome. And not just because it came in right after that unforgivable rap bridge.
Youth Lagoon, a relatively anonymous 22-year-old from Idaho named Trevor Powers, sounds about four times his age on his debut album. The Year of Hibernation masks its vocals with plenty of reverb, and there is something about Powers’ voice that makes him sound like an old record.
An old record that bemoans lost youth at the same time as it celebrates it (I’ll admit, a few of the lyrics have become apparent at this point). But they wouldn’t have had to, because the point about the album is that everything lies in melody, tone, crescendo. We know where the guy is heading emotionally way before we understand a single word.
That said, Powers’ actual age becomes apparent elsewhere. ‘Posters’, which opens the album, complements Youth Lagoon’s trademark floating synths, harmonies and bass with the type of dirty drums that Kanye West stole from Dr. Dre’s ‘Xxplosive’ to make, well, a career. And ‘Daydream’ descends into James Blake-ish minimalism for a brief moment.
The Year of Hibernation is a listener-friendly album that executes what have become indie-pop conventions to reach that final goal: tear-eyed nostalgia, big moments (see ‘Montana’). And, like many contemporaries, Powers stands alone behind some ambitious production. The tracks share basically the same structure—a treading synth and gentle, hardly discernable vocals, picked up first by a single-string guitar and then drums—but on a cohesive album, it works.
By now we might add another question, one we’ve been avoiding: how does it feel to jump on the bandwagon in praise of the guy? Great.
words Sven Carlsson
Youth Lagoon: Afternoon
Youth Lagoon: Posters
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Buy The Year of Hibernation