Youth Lagoon - Year Of Hibernation

The itunes 'plays' function can be an embarrassing thing . But also a good barometer of just how much one does actually like the music they posses. The only way, surely, of accurately doing the latter is to see how many times any given track is played. On this basis, Youth Lagoon's 'Cannons' is my favourite song. I have played it 36 times since late last summer when I first obtained Year Of Hibernation. This is the work of Trevor Powers, a young English student from Boise ID, who uses synths in much the same way as a troubled troubadour of yore may have taken to his room with a battered guitar.

Maybe the reason it has outdone everything from Astral Weeks to Daydream Nation in the play stakes is that, while ambitious, YL's music does so in such a self effacing and quietly magnificent manner. While aiming for the stars YL's compositions stay firmly rooted in the bedroom. Reverbed vocals and DIY keyboards mask the human frailty and emotion depicted in the songs like a teenager's mop of hair over an acne ridden face. Though anthemic these songs never veer into the bombastic.
 
The indie gimmick du jour - reverbed vocals- suits YL perfectly. The vocals, in 'July' for instance, depict a sense of distance, of one stepping back and looking at themselves. Illustrating the disconnect between memories and recollection perhaps. Or more likely, reflecting a kind of alienation or anxiety about growing older: an unsureness of ones own voice, and hence identity, too.

This may sound like a trite observation, yet to me this album sounds like a coming of age work. Put together, the unifying theme of this meagre eight track album, is one of becoming. Akin to an uneasy young adult stepping gingerly into a vast and scary world. Eager to cherish the memories and love of youth but resigned to change. There is also a tenderness and alluring vulnerability to YL's take on things.

'Seventeen' is perhaps the song that most typifies the album, and positioned at its end gains an added resonance. The retrospective narrator, guides us through an idyllic sounding tale of hunting for snakes, 'having fun' whilst conceding that he's now 'alone in my room'. The sense of time slipping away is rendered simply and poignantly. As is the very awkwardness of simply being 'Seventeen'. The fragile, effeminate moan that precedes the beats towards the tail of the track are as eloquent as any of the literal images chosen.

Thoughts of his mother are immortalised here as  recounts how she implored the teen to never "stop imagining. The day that you do is the day that you die." Its this kind of irony free recollection that endears me to this album. It is very easy to dismiss such whimsical notions as twee or pretentious. Yet this is what being young, naive and a teenager is about.

To be overly critical seems callous, especially when these reflections are brought to life with such slow melodic grace.