Music, like the mind, is a complex thing. Some people navigate life via talking, others counter their demons with drugs, and the talented ones use music. Trevor Powers, the man behind Youth Lagoon has been well documented in his use of music to sort his own thoughts and make sense of it all. Describing his musical output as ‘my mind communicating with me, not the other way round’ the sounds of Youth Lagoon span that space between physical, psychological and metaphysical, a complex and barely contained sonic sort of meditation. New single Raspberry Cane is bracketed by liquid languidness, dreamy vocals easing us into the compulsive piano rhythms that gently usher you into, but not necessarily through a track that is simultaneously woozy and fragile but underpinned by a sense of solidity, as though the mind is aware of what the body is what. Sometimes sweet, sometimes veering on scary, the whole thing is lush and lovely whilst also being, or perhaps due to, its air of ephemeral transience. Lyrical motifs of ash, blood and wine give the sense of ambition and aiming beyond the known, but despite the feeling that this is not an ‘A G D she loves me’ style song, reinforced by words such as ‘This dimension and the next…I’m polluted by my blood, so help me cut it out and rinse it down the drain’ it is ultimately a song about love, and where it can be found. Not happy music, and indeed there are moments when a knot sort of lodges itself in your throat, but it is the type of sound that brims with attractive complexities and draws you in through them. Around five minutes in, when torments and demons may all be getting too much the first ending (pre closing bracket) is one of whirling carousel, bringing you back from he brink of emotion as exploration to simple childlike naivety. Strange but beautiful.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ahTBaT4oKI&w=560&h=315]
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