Rarely Do I Dream

Youth Lagoon is the outlet for Boise, Idaho's Trevor Powers' most personal hopes and fears, which he sets to dreamy yet tenacious lo-fi pop. After releasing three albums, Powers ended the project for a time in 2016, but he returned rejuvenated in 2023 with his fourth full-length, Heaven Is a Junkyard, an Americana-tinged reading of his songwriting centered around his vocals and upright piano. He re-expanded his sonic palette with full arrangements including hazy synths for 2025's Rarely Do I Dream, a dreamy and writerly album inspired after coming across a box of home movies from his childhood.

Powers posted his first Youth Lagoon song online in May 2011, sparking buzz that resulted in a deal with Fat Possum Records. Arriving that September, his first album, The Year of Hibernation, dealt with psychological dysphoria. The more expansive Wondrous Bughouse, which drew comparisons to vintage Pink Floyd and the Flaming Lips and revolved around "the struggle between the physical and the spiritual world," was released in March 2013. Powers then decamped to England to work with co-producer Ali Chant at Toybox Studios in Bristol. The results became Savage Hills Ballroom, Youth Lagoon's third studio long-player, which saw release in 2015. On February 1, 2016, Powers announced the end of the Youth Lagoon project.

For the next few years, Powers released experimental tapes under his own name, including 2018's Mulberry Violence and 2020's Capricorn. In 2021, Powers was inspired to write new material that he eventually realized should be used to reactivate Youth Lagoon. The songs had elements of country and Americana mixed in with Powers' signature songwriting style, and many of the tunes were based around haunting piano as the core instrument. Powers recorded the new album, Heaven Is a Junkyard, with producer Rodaidh McDonald over a six-week period and released it in June of 2023.

He quickly went to work on Youth Lagoon's fifth long-player, an ambitious combination of childhood-memory explorations, storytelling, and small-town-America mythos, all instigated by the discovery of old home movies from the late '80s and early '90s. In service of these ideas, the project's re-expanded palette included full-band arrangements bedded in lush synths and fuzzy guitars. It was also Powers' first time writing primarily on guitar instead of piano. Recorded with McDonald as co-producer, engineer, and mixer, the completed Rarely Do I Dream arrived on Fat Possum in February 2025. ~ TiVo Staff