Album review
Youth Lagoon has announced a new album titled Rarely Do I Dream. Trevor Powers’s latest LP under the moniker, following 2023’s Heaven Is a Junkyard, includes the early singles ‘Football’, ‘Lucy Takes a Picture’, and ‘My Beautiful Girl’. It arrives on February 21 via Fat Possum. A new track is out today called ‘Speed Freak’; check it out via the accompanying video, directed by longtime creative collaborator Tyler T. Williams, below.
“This song came from a thought I had of giving the angel of death a hug,” Powers explained in a statement. “We spend our whole lives running from this thing we can’t outrun. This body is temporary, but there is no death. Only transformation. A door opens when you learn to let go of the identity you’ve been building your whole life. Someone told me a couple years ago, ‘I have good news for you and I have bad news. The bad news is Trevor is doomed. There’s no hope for Trevor. The good news is — you’re not Trevor.’ When I heard that, it clicked.”
Powers drew inspiration for Rarely Do I Dream from a shoebox of home videos he discovered in his parents’ basement, which prompted him to start incorporating them into his music. “What I was really consumed with was how much I could zoom in on my actual history,” he said. “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.”
“The more I rewind the tapes of my life, the more I can hear the voice of my soul,” Powers added. “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.”
Revisit our 2023 interview with Youth Lagoon.
Rarely Do I Dream Cover Artwork:
Rarely Do I Dream Tracklist:
1. Neighborhood Scene
2. Speed Freak
3. Football
4. Gumshoe (Dracula From Arkansas)
5. Seersucker
6. Lucy Takes A Picture
7. Perfect World
8. My Beautiful Girl
9. Canary
10. Parking Lot
11. Saturday Cowboy Matinee
12. Home Movies (1989-1993)
