Youth Lagoon - Year of Hibernation
I know I’ve been super behind with my reviews (THIS WEEKEND I PROMISE) but I wrote this one for youth lagoon’s year of hibernation for my junior english class, thought it might be blog worthy?
Anyone who grew up in the dregs of the suburbs created a soundtrack, intentionally or unintentionally, which defined the first eighteen years of life. It includes the song you listened to at middle school dances and the song you listened to the first time you got your license and you drove all around your town with your best friend. There’s the song you played before you snuck out while your parents were sneaking and the song that seemed to dribble out of the speakers after you played it on repeat when a first love went awry. But it’s rare that an artist can encapsulate all of these memories and feelings after they happened, but newcomer artist Youth Lagoon manages to do that on his debut album, “The Year of Hibernation”. The album is filled with tracks that are reminiscent of a time that was filled with change and the beauty and hardships of growing up.
At the age of twenty-two, Trevor Powers isn’t too far from his days of growing up in the neighborhoods of Idaho. His musical career began as a homegrown project in the space of his bedroom with a keyboard, a guitar, and a recorder. In interviews, he said that music was his way of dealing with anxiety and had no aspirations to become a legitimate artist. His excitement over his success can be felt through his words – it feels genuine, in a world where so many artists are bitter over their mild accomplishments. This sentiment only adds to the overall charm of Youth Lagoon. His songs are delicate and beautiful without bordering on cutesy or obnoxious. Each one describes a different scene that will be experienced eternally by teenagers but that sticks through adulthood. On a lot of albums, it’s easy to pick out a few tracks that stand out and disregard the rest as filler material. “The Year of Hibernation” would be incomplete without the sum of its parts. Listening to the album is like taking a peak into a journal that someone accidentally wrote especially for you.
Powers has an unbelievable ability to evoke nostalgia about memories you didn’t even know you had. Each song is filled with a quietness and beauty that evokes a sun-drenched afternoon or a wistful night in your youth. The album opens with “Posters”, which begins very quietly with only the slight sound of reverb and Powers’ voice reminiscing about a motivational poster he had when he was nine years old. The song begins slowly, but Powers strength is in his ability to build a track. Each song starts out in the same quiet fashion, but explodes at just the right time. There doesn’t have to be a clashing of drums or a crazy guitar solo for the listener to experience the pure emotion that Powers is channeling into his songs. On the song “Seventeen”, it begins with the small tinkering of a keyboard while he paints a picture of a group of friends or a family searching for animals at the lake before breaking into the chorus, “When I was seventeen/My mother said to me/Don’t stop imagining/The day that you do is the day that you die”. These lyrics could easily be written off as cheesy in any other context, but Powers has the ability to make them feel sincere. The experience a listener has when listening to his music shows we never really grow out of those poignant and tumultuous years.
-Emily Thompson
