On ‘Heaven Is A Junkyard,’ Youth Lagoon Returns With Glorious Low Fi Fuzz Pop Ballads (ALBUM REVIEW)

Photo Credit: Tyler T Williams

It has been some time since we’ve heard from Youth Lagoon, and time can do a lot to a person. In the case of frontman Trevor Powers, time forced a period of self-analyzation and isolation that reshaped the man we all thought we knew. After a terrifying health crisis that left the songwriter voiceless, he emerges from the ashes of his isolation with a new perspective on the world, that perspective will fuel the album we have before us.

Heaven Is A Junkyard is the first album Powers has created under the Youth Lagoon moniker since he put the project on the back burner in 2016 and while the music has always leaned on gentle vulnerability for its sound, this latest set of songs is darker than ever. The aforementioned perspective has manifested itself in ten lo-fi fuzz-pop ballads so hauntingly intimate that they transport you into the shoes of Powers while the artist is at his lowest, giving you a revealing insight into a man whose world-view was forced to shrink into bleakness as he battles to find the art in it all. 

The only remedy Powers could find was penning poetry for the misfortunate. The lyrics of Heaven Is A Junkyard paint us a picture of an artist reevaluating the world he thought he was so in tune with and finding that he may have never known it at all. Instead of trying to make sense of everything at once, Powers focused on his home of Idaho and scribbled out moving poetry that plays on the isolating intimacy of the rural lifestyle. He took the loftiest of emotions and attempted to shrink them down, the result is some of Youth Lagoon’s most impressive yet dreariest lyrics to date. The single “Idaho Alien” has the melody of a classic country tune and the lyrics of a poem written in a dusty dive bar, emphasizing Powers’ environment and the effects it has on him. This will become the central theme of the LP, songs written by someone experiencing the deepest loneliness and questioning why it’s happening while living in a space that is supposed to provide comfort. 

Despite the narrative that flows through Heaven Is A Junkyard, these songs have the power to stand on their own. A song like “Trapeze Artist” spins a beautiful tale of reaching for a balance in life while “Mercury” has the artist tired of trying to make sense of the material world and looking to what comes next for a sense of hope. No philosophical stone is left unturned on Youth Lagoon’s latest LP, its lyrics explore the full spectrum of human emotions and whittle them down to minimal vignettes that play on the beauty of suffering. 

Powers’ lyrics are only elevated by the arrangements of Heaven Is A Junkyard. The album uses stirring piano melodies and muted drum patterns to drive the sonic direction, allowing each element of these instrumentals to melt into a fuzzy minimalism. The first half of the album uses tempos that fit its lyrics, these are crawling instrumentals that take inspiration from the slow pace of the songwriters home town. After a quick instrumental pitstop at the murky “Lux Radio Theatre”, these arrangements get a facelift. The second half is just as muddy but introduces harmonies and more lively drum patterns that keep the album from complacency. Without this small switch in tempo, Heaven Is A Junkyard would sound like a long, drawn-out story with no happy ending. Powers avoided this and crafted an album with a central theme that doesn’t take away from its musicianship and leaned on tone to push its message almost as much as it used its lyrics to welcome us to the headspace of its author. 

Trevor Powers wanted to make a statement with his return to Youth Lagoon. While sonically he stuck to a certain blueprint that we’re used to from the project, Heaven Is A Junkyard marks the most powerful and personal album from Powers yet. For ten heart-wrenching ballads, the songwriter spins a tale of grief with no end in sight as he is forced by unforeseen circumstances to find the silver lining in a world where it feels impossible. Life squeezed these potent examples of moving pop out of Powers, giving us an album of sentimental poetry that finds solace in its own loneliness and presents its findings over a bed of moody arrangements that deserves your undivided attention. 

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