Trevor Powers, Youth Lagoon’s producer/singer/songwriter, has established himself as a modern mystic. Powers’ music consistently has his personality at its core, bending his own truths into poetic anthems for all. His writing never fears vulnerability, and his production exceeds the norms and rules, allowing the vivid imagery he depicts to become palpable and swallow the listener. After a near-decade hiatus, Powers returned to Youth Lagoon in early 2023 with Heaven Is a Junkyard, an acclaimed comeback with plush ballads and captivating storytelling. Thankfully, Powers isn’t making us wait for another Youth Lagoon LP with Rarely Do I Dream being released this Friday (February 21).
Around the same time he released Heaven Is a Junkyard, Powers stumbled across a box of home movies on a visit back to his childhood home. These small moments captured on film inspired Rarely Do I Dream, a 12-song LP that seizes the intimacy of a family laughing around a glowing fireplace. Ironically, Powers grasps this quaintness with more complex production than what was featured on his previous album. The plush synths are replaced with chugging drums and moments of dense distortion, and the longing in Powers’s voice makes room for more assured tones. Rarely Do I Dream features more than a sonic shift in Powers’s production prowess; these songs detail an entirely new lease on life for the artist.
“The summer taught me life’s a baseball bat to the jaw,” croons Powers on “Gumshoe (Dracula from Arkansas).” The sentiment behind this lyric seems to echo throughout the other moments that build Rarely Do I Dream. By digging through the past, Powers seems more at peace with the present moment. Despite the imaginative collage-style production and gothic storytelling whimsy, this makes these songs feel urgent and focused. While Rarely Do I Dream feels more confident and complete compared to other Youth Lagoon outings, Powers’s classic, fearless vulnerability drives this album. “Seersucker” takes you to a dark corner of the artist’s mind as Powers pens a heartbreaking tale of his past, while “Football” deals with undeserved regret and the difficulties of escaping them. Therein lies the cosmic balance Powers struck on Rarely Do I Dream. These twelve songs feel like the artist realizing just how expansive of a world he built with Youth Lagoon and taking advantage of the artistic freedom gifted to a select few.
On paper, Rarely Do I Dream is a perilous move for Powers. This album should be a disjointed mess with a juxtaposing tracklist that bounces from distorted indie rock to neo-Americana, left-filed storytelling concepts, and a reckless abandon for melodic phrasing. Miraculously, Powers falls victim to none of this. By tying everything together with his signature lo-fi vocals and those home movies, Powers is free to roam from one vision to the next, making Rarely Do I Dream his most experimental yet digestible album. The fact that a soothing ballad like “Canary” feels right at home next to the frantic production of “Perfect World” is a testament to Powers’s approach to his craft. An approach that finally feels fully realized on Rarely Do I Dream.
Artists rarely get to say they’ve made the album they always dreamt of making, but Powers seems to achieve just that on Rarely Do I Dream. The latest Youth Lagoon album is a coming-of-age story in more ways than one. Throughout these twelve songs, we better understand Youth Lagoon as an artist and Powers as a person. Rarely Do I Dream blurs the mystique of an artist whose honest songwriting made listeners feel like insiders with the musician and introduces the world to the full potential of Youth Lagoon.
