Youth Lagoon – Heaven Is A Junkyard: Interview

Youth Lagoon is the musical project of Trevor Powers, at least it was until 2016. Then he retired the name and kept a low profile.

Now Youth Lagoon lives again! The new album, Heaven Is A Junkyard has just been released and Trevor is back in the spotlight. Its taking some getting used to. We found Trevor Powers home in Boise, Idaho where he is taking stock of the last few years and planning for the future.

Listen to the interview here:

Read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: Well, so congratulations on the new record which just came out, what, on the ninth? So what has that experience been like for you, to kind of start up the whole youth lagoon thing, again, putting out the record and, you know, going through all the talking about it and stuff?

Trevor: Well, it’s bizarre how unrecognizable it is, because of who I am as a person now, and what I’ve been able to…yeah, just was able to bring to the table in these new ways that I wouldn’t have been able to had I not killed it off.

That was the most interesting thing about…I killed off the moniker in either the end of 2015, early 2016, because I, I couldn’t identify with it anymore. It had turned into this thing that I just couldn’t really latch on to and sink my teeth into.

And a lot of that had to do with these, these frustrations and kind of just getting bored with people expecting it to be this, this certain thing, which I never identified with to begin with. And when when I had burned that house down and you know, left the moniker behind and started making music under my own name, it felt so…I mean, it was it was completely necessary. And it felt like going to college in a sense where I could I could succeed and fail and go to these new places, in my mind, relatively risk free. And, and not many eyes on me.

I had never expected to go, you know, I don’t even see it as going back to Youth Lagoon, I see it as a reclamation, I see it as taking something that was declared dead and resurrecting it and combining it with these brand new ideas and philosophies and being able to fit on his head and, and turn it into this playground that it never was before. There’s a sense of familiarity to it and history to it, but that history has given me the ability to add even more dimension to it and be able to mold it into this new thing.

MD: Right. So obviously, when you put Youth Lagoon to bed the first time around, you had probably no intention of ever coming back to it. Now here we are. So was there an event, something that made you realize, suddenly this is all happening? Or was it a more gradual thing,

Trevor: Gradual, but there was also an event. I would say many events. But one main event that had woken me up to this a little bit was I had this reaction to an over the counter medication that I turned my digestive system upside down. It created this domino effect inside of me when you think about every single system that’s obviously connected to the digestive system, all these things, it was this chain of events that happened that triggered this complete and utter loss of control in my body where I had seen multiple specialists.

So many tests done, no one can figure out what the fuck was going on. So it became this, this scenario where for about four months or so five months, I was flailing and I was panicked. And I was, you know, obviously had no answers. And then there was this…because I was I was pushed off this cliff in the sense of I either had…I felt like I had one of two options. One was kill myself, which, to be honest with you, I came really close to doing. And the second, because I didn’t want the first option, was to be able to really learn what is happening inside of me, not my flesh and bone, but in my spirit, and to be able to work with that and get to know that spirit and figure out how the fuck to move forward.

And when I did that, that’s when things started changing. Within that too became this whole idea of…for years I struggled with this sense of self love, self acceptance. And a huge part of that had to do with, I would compartmentalize these parts of my brain of use again fell into that category of this is something that is old, this is something that is discarded. I outgrew this thing, therefore it stays in the past.

And the more that I had really started learning how to love myself and learning how to speak in these new ways, the more that I realized that taking something that was discarded be it into the into the past and into the future was so much more…there was so much more truth there because it represented the image of what life really is, which is, nothing is compartmentalized. Absolutely nothing is in a box. These lines in the sand that we draw as human beings are all fictitious and being able to play with that and do something that that’s honest and pure, was really, it changed, it changed my life. And it changed my songwriting and the way I approach expression in a way that I didn’t think was possible.

MD: Man, that must have been terrifying going through that.

Trevor: Yeah, it was awful. It was so awful. It’s weird, even like when I had first started doing interviews for this album, I was horrified on how I would even talk about it. Because there was there was this PTSD attached to it. And when I would start talking, I would go back to my house, if I had an interview, and I was on the phone at the park, I would come come to my house and I would be sweaty and I would be panicked. My heart would be racing, because it was like I was re-living these experiences.

And so I realized I can’t just…I was debating how much of this stuff do I talk about? How much do I do not. And I figured, I can’t choose to not talk about these things, that’s dishonest. But what I can do is actually use this in a way as a new form of therapy. And the more that I talked about it, the more all those feelings have gone away. But it’s also easy for…with some grandiose story like this for people to get caught up in this narrative and thinking that the album is about this experience, and it really isn’t at all besides a few lines. What it did though, is it woke me up. It made me present. I was numb. And it did this thing where it just, it took me into the present moment in a way that nothing else ever has.

MD: So getting to the record, my understanding is that you kind of considered the track The Sling is kind of the album’s core or centerpiece. Why is that?

Trevor: Well, it was one of the first songs written that helped the album have an identity and from that point on, I knew more so where to take the spirit of the album. I had other songs before that.

I have an early form of Mercury that existed about four years ago, that I couldn’t quite crack. I couldn’t crack the code on but it was there as a shell. A couple other songs were like that, Helicopter Toy was like that. But when I wrote The Sling, that was one of the first ones front to back, it was like I found this new territory, this thing that was completely unexplored.

And when I had written down the line, ‘Heaven is a junkyard and it’s my home,’ there was so much truth in that line. And I couldn’t even tell you what the truth was. That’s that’s one thing that I love so much about, about language and words. When you put things together, sometimes even being the person stringing them together, you don’t know what it is about that line that’s so compelling. But you know, like when I wrote it down, I became so possessed by this thing of why does this…why does this ring true so much? And every day it felt like the answer was something different.

MD: So I noticed that you’ve done a video for The Sling and a couple other tracks, Prizefighter and Idaho Alien, and you have a guy named Tyler T. Williams kind of directing these things. What is your process of working with him as far as visualizing these songs?

Trevor: Well, Ty is my best friend. And so really, it’s just us having fun. So much of it, it started off, you know, we start out these ideas with with zero agenda. We just have these…we love a lot of the…we’re both really, really into movies.

And we have a lot of the same inspirations and filmmakers that we love. So usually they would start off by us watching movies. And then we talk about certain symbols or objects, like with Idaho Alien was just the truck. We were like, we need a truck, but we had no idea what we were going to do with the truck when we got it. So my mom, she’s in the rodeo community. She actually just rode her last rodeo about a month and a half ago, which is really sad but but moving.

But she’s got all these friends with trucks and horses and all this stuff. And so using people like her as has these resources where she would you know, like with Idaho Aliens she posted on Facebook saying my son’s making a music video and he’s wondering if anyone has a truck he can borrow. That kind of stuff. So me and Ty got the truck, but we had no idea what we were gonna do with the truck. And we ended up finding…we drove out to this area called Swan Falls Dam, which is a little bit past Kuna, Idaho, a small town. And we found some telephone poles and like the whole thing has just been this falling in love with the present moment. And falling really falling in love with my best friend. Because without Ty I don’t think this album would have the identity that it has.

MD: Yeah. And when you mentioned films and Idaho, I keep thinking of My Own Private Idaho. If you don’t mind, just throw in a couple of filmmakers or films that are that are profound for you.

Trevor: Well my favorite would be Andrei Tarkovsky. His film Stalker is my favorite film of all time, right? Have you seen it?

MD: I haven’t seen that. I’ve seen a bunch of Tarkovsky but I haven’t seen that one.

Trevor: You should definitely watch Stalker. In my opinion, it is the greatest sci fi film ever made not because of what he shows but because of what he doesn’t. And so much of it is left to the power of the imagination. That’s all I’ll say is there’s just a lot of forces at play with the way he uses naturalistic settings and your imagination. So that would be number one. I love Sophia Coppola. I love Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch. Spike Lee. Yeah, there’s just so many people that I’ll in love with their movies. And every time I watch some of these films, sometimes I watch them over and over, all immediately feel compelled to go work on music. If I ever get stuck, or watch movies, that’s what I do.

MD: So when you’re writing songs, do you kind of visualize the songs in your head?

Trevor: I do. Yeah, yeah, I always create my own…I’m playing out my own movies in my head. And then when it comes to music videos, they never take that form because my whole thing is like…with Ty. I love Ty. And I trust Ty so much that I always tell him whatever he sees, whatever he’s excited about, whatever that spark is, let’s do that thing.

Because that’s always going to be the most exciting. So I see music as, I’ll finish this part of it that’s me, then handing off the baton to someone that I try to let them do exactly what they do best. And then I’ll give my input.

So it’ll be this ping pong back and forth. But really, it’s handing off the baton to someone that yeah, like with Ty, there’s just so much ultimate trust that I could even not be involved and I could just say, here’s this song, make a video for it. Even though that’s not how our process works. I could do that and be nothing but excited about the end result.

MD: Now my understanding is the the album was recorded over a six week period. And you have a co-producer whose name I’ll probably mangle. So if you can…

Trevor: Rodaidh MacDonald.

MD: Rodaidh McDonald, so just give me a feel what the vibe was like in making a record over the six weeks? How did it feel to you?

Trevor: Well, it felt so…I had been…so I made all the demos at home, first off, and the demos, I probably wrote 95% of the album, within the span of I would say about eight months, eight to 12 months. And then when all the demos were done, I had put together a list of people you know to hit up and see if we would work out together and what our vibe was. And Rodaidh was at the top of the list. He was number one. And so my manager had gotten his contact info set up a meeting.

MD: What was it about him that made him number one?

Trevor: I mean, his work speaks for itself. So he’s he’s got not only you know, I’ve heard so many pristine things about his reputation as a person, and then on top of that, his work that’s what really…you know, like, I’ll listen to something like…and and how vast his catalogue is too, you know.  His work with Adele, which is out of this fucking world. And then his work with people like, like Sampha people like Jamie XX, just so many…it’s so broad.

It’s not like he’s going into it with this specific style, I could tell he’s staying in tune with what an idea is and then how to make that come alive. And that’s exactly how our process was because our chemistry from day one was was so incredible that we actually did about 98% of the tracking for The Sling the very first day. The only 2% was we had to add on a couple of vocal things. And then we had…there was some string arrangements to be put in and all that, but yet the majority of it was done the very first day. So after that first day of tracking, we both knew that there was something a lot deeper there.

MD: Right. Now, I see I think you’re out performing again, for the first time in a long time. So what is it like to bring these songs…to be in person in the same room with people listening to them, and hearing them…hearing you perform them?

Trevor: It’s gonna be trip. The only songs that I’ve performed so far had been stripped down. I did a couple songs two weeks ago…I put together a live band. And so we did some songs in a record store, in Amoeba in LA. And then I did some songs just by myself at a piano at the local record store here in Boise. And then the first proper show is going to be in about three weeks. So to be able to present things in a way that yeah, like, there’s some songs aren’t they stay really true to the material. Other songs veer from it in a way that I think is still respecting what the song is. But yeah, I can’t wait. I’m so excited.

MD: It’s got to be quite a journey, so to speak from, you know, taking off and giving up the name and reclaiming it. And going through this whole process and working with new people and having all the other stuff with your health in the middle of it. Do you feel like a different person? It must have done a lot to you.

Trevor: Yeah, so I’m so different. Yeah, even to the point where…It’s crazy, though, how much I can still stand behind the older material. I could play songs from The Year Of Hibernation, and I think it holds up like I wrote it yesterday, which I’m really proud of.

But then who I am as a songwriter now, beyond that, who I am as a person now is….yeah I’ve never felt so much inspiration and so many different paths that I can take art before and that’s really just come down to being aware of the present moment and getting to know myself and falling in love with new things too.  That’s been the biggest cheat code for me is there’s a lot of people that I know that it’s easy, it’s easy to become stagnant because they’re listening to the same music. They’re watching the same movies, they’re having the same conversations. And in that is death. There’s nothing there.

But if you’re stretching yourself, and you’re making yourself feel uncomfortable, and you’re putting yourself in front of things and people and places that I still choose to. Initially, there can be these new sparks that happen and yeah, it’s been teaching me so much in such a natural way on how to evolve without trying. I’m just trying to be as light as possible so that the wind can carry me. And if I can do that, I think I did a good job.

Youth Lagoon’s Heaven Is A Junkyard is out now

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