Review Rock music

Youth Lagoon

Wondrous Bughouse

Fat Possum • 2013

Youth Langoon’s second record is coming straight from the bedroom again. The only difference this time is that they must have had a huge terrarium standing in the middle of the room, serving as a source of inspiration. On the first listen, »Wondrous Bughouse« is as frantically industrious as an anthill. Now, we only need to think back to our biology-classes and say: Hold on! Anthills aren’t really frantic, they only appear to be! And that’s exactly what the second record by Trevor Powers from Boise, Ohio, is all about. When listening for the first time, it all sounds as if it’s randomly wobbling, chirring and screaming at every single corner. However, after a few re-runs, the anthill’s revolution appears to become somewhat magical. Trevor Powers wanders through spiritual and existential questions and puts them into tousled instrumentals, frazzling on all ends. All this has something wonderful, something fabulous. In short: trippy shit for the kindergarten. I can’t help but imagining Youth Lagoon as a scraggy kindergarten-teacher, who, while tripping on mushrooms, tells the kids an eccentric story about a witch who’s able to talk to bugs. This music has overtaken dream-pop a long time ago. It’s laptop- and guitar-music from a bedroom full of greens, spider webs and insects, and everything is bustling about and glowing. For me, it’s all a little too teeming, a chaos of instruments and freely flourishing vocals – it all sounds a bit like an a.d.d.-therapy.

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