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Youth Lagoon Wrestles With Mortality on March LP ‘Wondrous Bughouse’

Youth Lagoon's Trevor Powers

In barely a couple of months, Trevor Powers will release his second album as Youth Lagoon. Wondrous Bughouse, the follow-up to the Boise, Idaho-based multi-instrumentalist’s toweringly intimate 2011 debut The Year of Hibernation, is due out on March 5, again via Fat Possum. 

In a statement, Powers says his songwriting process reflected a growing interest in the “human psyche and where the spiritual meets the physical world.” It’s easy to see how that might carry through to track list entries as “Through Mind and Back,” though other Wondrous Bughouse song titles, such as “Pelican Man” and “Daisyphobia,” are a bit more cryptic. And “Sleep Paralysis” is only one letter away from sharing a title with fellow bedroom-pop alum Neon Indian’s 2010 single “Sleep Paralysist,” for whatever that’s worth.

When it comes to Youth Lagoon, it’s more likely the title refers to something from within Powers himself. “My mental state is usually pretty sporadic,” he says in the statement. “A lot of this record was influenced by a fear of mortality but embracing it at the same time. Realizing that human life is only great because it is temporary. Experimenting with ideas about dimensions. I’m not a gifted speaker, so explaining things is difficult for me. But music always makes sense.”

Wondrous Bughouse track list:
1. “Through Mind and Back”
2. “Mute”
3. “Attic Doctor”
4. “The Bath”
5. “Pelican Man”
6. “Dropla”
7. “Sleep Paralysis”
8. “Third Dystopia”
9. “Raspberry Cane”
10. “Daisyphobia”