It’s romantic to imagine a “bedroom musician” shyly strumming away on an old guitar after everyone else has gone to sleep. But these days, it’s perhaps more common that those sorts of personal artists are crafting gigantic, earbuds-filling sounds on computers, keyboard controllers, and electronic interfaces. Case in point: Boise, Idaho native Trevor Powers — a.k.a. Youth Lagoon, whose gorgeous first album The Year Of Hibernation captured that feeling of confinement and being alone even as the melodies sweep dramatically over you.
If the first single is any indication, Youth Lagoon’s follow-up, Wondrous Bughouse, will retain that same sense of intimacy, but grow in scope. In concert, Youth Lagoon fleshed out those sparse arrangements to satisfying moments. The sprawling six-minute track, “Dropla,” seems to draw from that live sound thanks to a lusher instrumental palette. And with the repeated refrain — “You’ll never die, you’ll never die”, “Dropla” builds to an emotionally stirring place as if Powers is awakening from that hibernation and confidently is looking outward for the first time.