For The Record: Wondrous Bughouse by Youth Lagoon

Intimate communication appears to be a painful endeavor for the modern college student. Indeed, Trevor Powers was a senior at Boise State University when he began writing and recording highly personal tracks under the moniker Youth Lagoon as an outlet for his crippling anxiety and erratic mind. As such, his acclaimed debut, 2011’s The Year of Hibernation, was rife with earnest nostalgia as depicted through anecdotal vignettes from the perspective of a plague-riddled mind.

Roughly a year and a half has passed since Powers embarked into the world of post-undergrad doldrums, which one would think could only be exacerbated when distracted by the mental strain of constant touring.

Yet he displays a marked maturity in terms of both production ability and lyrical exploration in his sophomore effort Wondrous Bughouse.

The album name itself encapsulates the stylistic direction that Youth Lagoon has taken, conveying a striking impression of lush melodies drenched in pastels floating across the expansive landscape of imagination.

That which musically embodied The Year of Hibernation – minimalistic electro-synth beats metrically pulsating through hazy, ambient lyrics – is now replaced with whirling, tumultuous and frequently jovial neo-psychedelic pop, as majestic as it is bold, reminiscent of turn-of-the-century space rock acts.

With seven of the album’s 10 songs clocking in at over five minutes apiece, Wondrous Bughouse is largely defined by ambivalent tensions between artful yet screeching dissonance and euphonious synth-driven melodies; the image evoked is the contrast between errant thoughts clawing at the edge of consciousness while keen introspection somehow keeps them focused.

The most striking example is “Mute,” in which a wavery, scraping instrumental moves teasingly back and forth in opposition to an ethereal and shimmering riff that substitutes for a lack of chorus; meanwhile a towering drum loop, one unlike anything Youth Lagoon has done before, punches through the track as the conflicting forces dance around it.

Though perhaps sonically alienating at first, the continuously powerful visceral response molded by the song’s cycles validates the six-minute ride.

It is easy to find yourself joyfully lost in these summery, sickly-sweet cuts sometimes oddly redolent of cartoony carnival music, but that by no means should suggest that lyrical themes are any less dark and mystifying than past releases.

There’s a noticeable shift in Powers’s mentality in Wondrous Bughouse, most bluntly fleshed out by the recurring discussions of mortality, the bane of the young adult’s existence.

In  the warm, sparkly opening of “Dropla”, the artist gives way to a jumbled pot of confusion and anger over a lover lost among unanswered prayers. “Raspberry Cane” bitterly yet quite pointedly calls a toast to death before its climactic whirlwind of a conclusion.

Most disturbingly, “Attic Doctor” concludes with a grim picture:  “The doctor conceals her grin/To tell us you couldn’t have babies.”

His thoughts stem from deep contemplation over the role of humanity between the metaphysical and reality, reflecting rather external notions in comparison to the bedroom intimacy of his earlier lyricism. We are no longer company to his self-reflective journeys through campsites, household TV rooms and a stretch of road in his ’96 Buick.

The further Powers retracts into his own subconscious, the closer he comes to stumbling upon the universal within the particular: he returns to reality certainly more assured and accepting of human decay than when he went in.

While the overarching sound of Wondrous Bughouse doesn’t completely redefine what makes Youth Lagoon unique (the opening minute of “The Bath” confirms it; you may as well be listening to “Cannons” from YoH), its rich and cascading textures make up for some lyrical disappointment to produce an immensely enjoyable listen. Admittedly, I was a sucker for his private obsessions on YoH more so than the forays into collective consciousness in this album.

But then again, my strong liking for the album as a whole is a testament to the excellence of this album’s instrumentation.  Akin to The Flaming Lips-meets-Animal Collective – more like a regression to the mean, however – this album is meant to be heard through headphones on a tranquil afternoon, so give it a listen and see where it takes you.