Youth Lagoon: Tiny Desk Concert

Robin Hilton — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 14:39:00 +0000

Trevor Powers, the songwriter and frontman of Youth Lagoon, has never attempted to hide his navel-gazing anxieties. On his 2011 debut (The Year Of Hibernation) and its 2013 followup (Wondrous Bughouse), Powers documents a lifetime of existential crises with swirling questions about spirituality, mortality and his own mental state. Powers has also looked the part, appearing in photos and on stage wearing oversize pop-bottle glasses, with slumped shoulders and a mop of disheveled hair.

Youth Lagoon’s latest album, Savage Hills Ballroom, doesn’t obliterate this image — Powers still searches for answers to life’s biggest questions — but it’s by far Youth Lagoon’s most powerful, purposeful, confident work. The songs are expansive, self-assured and exquisitely produced.

It’s a shift you can see and hear in Youth Lagoon’s Tiny Desk performance. In person, Powers is poised, appearing almost joyful at times. The glasses are gone, the hair’s under control, and his idiosyncratic voice is far less fragile, in part because he (like nearly every artist who’s graced the Tiny Desk) had to fill the room without the benefit of singing through an amp.

Youth Lagoon treated the office to two songs from the new album: the heartbreaking tale of addiction “Kerry,” as well as “Rotten Human,” a meditation on the passage of time and search for purpose in life. And, as if to give a nod to his twitchy beginnings, Powers included “July,” a wistful reflection on youth and regret from the band’s debut.

Savage Hills Ballroom is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon)

Set List

“Kerry”
“July”
“Rotten Human”

Credits

Producers: Robin Hilton, Morgan Walker; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Morgan Walker, Julia Reihs; Production Assistant: Kate Drozynski; Photo by Julia Reihs/NPR

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First Listen: Youth Lagoon, ‘Savage Hills Ballroom’

Andy Battaglia — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 23:03:00 +0000

In rococo indie-rock songs that have wormed their way into ears well beyond his native Boise, Idaho, Youth Lagoon mastermind Trevor Powers comes across as a sensitive, trembling soul who combines precision and poise with a sense of being forever on the verge of falling apart. Shows of strength and vulnerability abound on Savage Hills Ballroom, the third Youth Lagoon album since his 2011 debut — and his most formidable work yet.

“My legs are limp, my shoes suckled stone,” Powers sings at the start of “Officer Telephone,” an opener that introduces itself as a pensive dirge before launching into a spacious, big-bottomed blast with muscular beats and frayed electronic sounds that peer surprisingly toward dubstep. Before the mania spills over, “Highway Patrol Stun Gun” gathers up and dials down with a balladeer’s piano and violin in the open air around Powers’ singular voice. That voice is a curious jewel: homely yet highly stylized, impish and ingenuous, constantly warbling while always falling flush into place after all manner of melodic adornments and curlicues. Reference points include the steamy gleam of Devendra Banhart, the wounded gulp of Conor Oberst and the otherworldly vocal registers of Sigur Rós, but Powers sounds possessed by something wholly his own.

“Kerry” puts that voice on fine display over heart-tugging piano and synths that widen the scope as the song builds. “Rotten Human” enlists it in arresting falsetto tones that evoke both the wisdom of smoky soul and wisps of childlike wonder. In “The Knower,” it winds through distended lyrics — “Oh, everybody wants to think they’re not what they ate / That their body’s great” — and a surreal assemblage of sounds that includes a chintzy drum machine, a sample of laughter, and horns straight out of a Mexican cantina. That it all comes together so organically and resoundingly speaks to Powers’ place as a free-spirited artist in command of his own station.

Youth Lagoon – Bandwidth

Youth Lagoon: Tiny Desk Concert

First Listen: Youth Lagoon, ‘Savage Hills Ballroom’