My GOAT has returned

Haven’t missed any live shows when I’ve had the chance to see em, hope they throw down again soon. Song is great

probably my most anticipated album this year so far next to Yves. If you haven’t already listened, the album under his own name instead of the YL moniker is insane and my favorite album of 2018. YL is just trevor so it’s basically another YL album lol

Yeah honestly I could never get into it, couldn’t get into Capricorn (came out in 2020) either unfortunately. Both were just too experimental for me.

I know they’re both Trevor, but with YL he’s very going for an entirely different genre and approach than his self titled stuff.

very interesting, just relistened to the debut for the first time in forever a few months ago. all the YL albums are solid tho, i’ll def check this new one out

New song, “Prizefighter”, out now

slowly shaping up to be an AOTY contender for me

What a great song f***

Tour going up this week too

trevorpowe.rs/tour

in

Album notes on Bandcamp got me f***ed up

"In 2016, Trevor Powers shut the door on Youth Lagoon. “I felt like I was in a chokehold,” he says. “Even though it was my music, I lost my way. In a lot of ways, I lost myself.”

Stepping back from the alias, Powers found personal transformation at his home in Idaho and released experimental tapes under his own name (2018’s 'Mulberry Violence' and 2020’s 'Capricorn').

“My mind has always been a devil,” says Powers. “It tells me terrible things—like I’m worthless, ugly, or broken. It’s like a motel TV stuck on a channel that won’t shut off, with static and endless late-night ads and preachers screaming about the end of the world.”

In October 2021, something changed the channel.

After taking an over-the-counter medication, Powers had a d*** reaction so severe it turned his stomach into a “non-stop geyser of acid,” coating his larynx and vocal cords for eight months. “I saw seven doctors and multiple specialists. I lost over thirty pounds. No one could help me,” says Powers. By Christmas, he could no longer speak, turning to text messages and a pen and paper as his only ways to communicate. “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to speak again, yet alone sing,” he says.

“It all felt symbolic in a way,” he adds. “I’d been swallowing fear all my life and now here it was coming back up. I used to think God watches people suffer. Now I know She suffers with you. That changed everything.”

The growth that followed that nightmare narrowed Powers’ focus. Rather than writing about the world at large, he started writing about home. “Family, neighbors, and grim reapers,” laughs Powers. “I’ve always written about far away things. That was my way of running from home. But the best material has been right in front of me this whole time in Idaho.”

With whispers of country, 'Heaven Is a Junkyard' is mutant Americana in a world of love, d****, storytelling, and miracles—held together by Powers’ voice and an upright piano. “If a lyric wasn’t right, a song wasn’t right,” says Powers, who scrapped two-and-a-half albums worth of material because it “wasn’t honest.”

“'Heaven Is a Junkyard' is about all of us. It’s stories of brothers leaving for war, drunk fathers learning to hug, mothers falling in love, neighbors stealing mail, cowboys doing d****, friends skipping school, me crying in the bathtub, dogs catching rabbits, and children playing in tall grass,” says Powers.

Throughout the album, he stitches together a lyrical style that feels both punk and western. “Daddy come home, and Daddy’s on junk,” Powers sings on "Idaho Alien"—nestled between a saloon-style piano and a rhythmic hiss that sounds like a baby monitor. "Prizefighter", the album’s third track, was written while watching a VHS of “Drugstore Cowboy.” Against a gauzy curtain of lap steel guitar and a CR78 drum machine, he explores the bond between two brothers, leaving it undefined what is fact and what is fiction. “Tommy left for war with no goodbye. I never got a chance to ask him why,” he sings.

"The Sling", a song Powers refers to as “the album’s core,” is a ghostly and naked piano ballad. We hear each line like a voyeur peeping through a crack in the wall. “On a lonely street, children still play. Families still eat,” he sings. 'Heaven Is a Junkyard' is a phrase Powers wrote down in his journal after watching a neighbor’s farmhouse catch fire. “I wasn’t even sure what those words meant at the time,” he says. “I’m not sure I still do.” But when the album’s title is heard at the end of "The Sling", it feels substantial.

“Heaven is a junkyard, and it’s my home,” sings Powers.

Recorded in six weeks with co-producer Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Adele, Gil Scott-Heron), 'Heaven Is a Junkyard' is a work of absolute devotion. A portrait of the God-haunted American West. And a reminder that there is always love in the tall grass.

“Youth Lagoon was never the chokehold,” he pauses.

“I was.”

nobody doing it lyrically like Trevor nowadays, man As someone extremely close with my brother and having him be my best friend when life has gotten rough, this hit me hard.

Maybe I had never pictured bad times,
brother in the d****tore falls behind
knuckles that no longer fit my eyes,
knuckles that a prize fighter can’t buy

I got a war that I can’t fight,
I got the sunshine to figure me out

that last line so powerful

If anyone’s going to the Constellation Room show, I’ll see you there

Trevor’s favorite song on the album is dropping tomorrow

Out on streaming rn!

This new one is a hell of a grower, and probably the most meaningful and best lyrics of the 3 singles released so far

Really awesome interview on this podcast, don’t know that I’ve heard him in an interview before so this was great

Friday.

Friday is a heavy hitter between this and King Krule.

Mulberry Violence has never left rotation.

so unbelievably real

no one ever knows about MV and it was top 3 of 2018 for me easy

This album might be his magnum opus

Yeah this was amazing as fully expected