San Francisco – It seems like everyone has been getting sick lately. I’ve been ill on-and-off for the past few weeks, the professors at my school have been canceling classes left and right, even my cat seems a little under the weather. But a cold couldn’t hold back Trevor Powers and his project Youth Lagoon, who stormed the stage at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium last week. Armed with a beer in one hand and some honey (‘So I can do my honey shots!’) nearby, he plowed through a dozen or so songs with determined fervor.
Youth Lagoon is currently touring behind his latest LP, September’s Savage Hills Ballroom, which explores a heavier, more forceful side to Powers. Written in the wake of an accident that took the life of a close friend, the album’s themes are noticeably darker than his earlier material, but the volume and production have been turned way up – both in the studio and on the stage. I’ve seen Youth Lagoon twice before (on his last tour, behind 2013’s Wondrous Bughouse) and both times it was just him behind a set of keys and mixers, long curly hair draped across his face as he murmured into a microphone. On this tour, he’s brought along an actual band, his hair is much shorter, and he used every inch of the stage as he flailed and stomped like a toddler having a rock and roll tantrum.
Naturally, most of the set featured songs from the latest LP, and these were the ones he was the most animated during. He kicked things off with the ‘80s-tinged “No One Can Tell” before hammering into “Highway Patrol Stun Gun,” the album’s current single. He then slid right into a track from his 2011 debut LP The Year of Hibernation, “Cannons,” whose whispering opening key notes had much of the audience squealing in delight (the only other song played from this LP was the thumping “July,” a romping version of which came much later in the set). After “Cannons” came another new track “Rotten Human,” straddling the line between growling and screaming during the repeated refrain of “No I won’t, no I won’t.”
Other new tracks included album opener “Officer Telephone,” the gorgeous instrumental “Doll’s Estate,” the avant-garde sounds of “Again,” and the brilliantly constructed lead single off the LP, “The Knower,” which builds gradually into a grand symphony of both analog and digital sound. We also got a taste of some of his excellent sophomore LP Wondrous Bughouse in the form of “Sleep Paralysis,” in which droopy synth melodies were replaced with gorgeous decorative piano, and the deceptively devastating “Dropla,” which came at the very end of the set. As an encore, we got a slightly truncated version of Wondrous Bughouse’s “Mute,” in which Powers and company decided to omit the first three verses, focusing more on the lengthy bridge that follows (which, in my opinion is the strongest part of the song anyway).
It takes a lot of guts to bear one’s heart on stage. I used to be an actor, so I kind of get it, but the words I would say were never words I had written, so it’s not the same. To speak, to sing, to perform in such a way that allows one to express themselves in the way truest to them is admirable. Youth Lagoon’s Trevor Powers knows pain, he knows heartache, he knows loss…and he translates it beautifully, both in the studio, and in the live setting. And he did it all with a fever of 101. If that’s not rock and roll, I don’t know what is.
Youth Lagoon just wrapped up his North American tour, but will be hitting the road in Europe in the spring (he’ll probably be a mainstay during next year’s festival season as well).
For more information visit the Youth Lagoon Facebook page.
Photo of Youth Lagoon by Corey Bell
Corey Bell
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