Youth Lagoon has shared details of their forthcoming album, Rarely Do I Dream, which is due out Feb 21 via Fat Possum. Inspired by a shoebox filled with home videos he discovered in his parent’s basement, Powers spent hours pulling out memories and recording bits and pieces which slowly became a sort of sonic travelogue of his past.
“When I took the tapes home and popped in the first one, it was my brother Bobby and I at the state fair,” he says. “I was 4 years old choking on a corn dog. If anything’s a summary of life, that is.“
He continues: “What I was really consumed with was how much I could zoom in on my actual history. 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 album finds its origins in childhood remembrances, moments frozen in time, captured on videotape and preserved like butterflies under glass. But this is just a springboard from which Powers explores a wider array of personal folktales, periods of youthful indiscretion, and the consequences of ill-informed choices.
On new song, “Speed Freak”, Powers drops into a murky synth bass-slathered world of day-glo echoes and questionable decisions. There is a layer of undulating static that rises and falls in time with the clattering beat, giving the track the appearance of a distant dream gone feral in the wilds of his subconscious. Its spirit is transient, shifting from one state to another, transforming and elongating as it billows out into the comfort of countless twilight shadows.
“This song came from a thought I had of giving the angel of death a hug,” Powers says. “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.”
The song is accompanied by a video directed by longtime collaborator Tyler T. Williams.
Watch the video below.
Rarely Do I Dream is due out Feb via Fat Possum. Pre-order the album here. Follow Powers on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
