Youth Lagoon, the moniker of Boise, Idaho native Trevor Powers, is back with his seventh album (his fifth under the name Youth Lagoon,) Rarely Do I Dream.

This new record follows up his 2023 LP, Heaven is A Junkyard, an album that was conceived after a sudden allergic reaction to some over-the-counter medication, rendering Powers unable to speak for months. Without having any idea if he'd be able to sing again – let alone talk – he began to write new music.

This desire to create seeps into his latest record as well. One second he's visiting his parents' house looking for an old harmonica, and the next he's found a box of old home movies, which formed the heartbeat of Rarely Do I Dream.

Trevor spoke with me for nearly an hour about his new record, his last record, what family means to him, and his love for movies and anime.

This conversation has been condensed for length and clarity.

Wade @ The Needle Drop: I can only imagine how personal this record is to you, given how it was made, and what was sampled throughout the album. Would you be able to explain how this album came to be?

Youth Lagoon: I was looking for this old harmonica that I knew they [his parents] had, and suddenly, I found these boxes of home videotapes. At the time, I was excited to see them, but the last thing on my mind was making music. I had just taken them home to watch them. No one in my family had seen them – which is ironic because my parents always had the camcorder out. They were always taping birthday parties, road trips, Christmas, the whole thing. But no one had ever watched them. I've got this old CRT TV in my studio, and I had started watching these tapes as I was making music. Within the first couple days of working, I had some sketches and stuff. I realized that the audio was one with the music I was working on. Writing music has always been a hobby for me, so I didn't really know how sucked into the wormhole I was going to get. The next thing I know it had my soul and I just couldn't stop working.

And all of a sudden – album seven!

Yeah, I mean, it's also wild how quickly this album came together and how much clarity there was in terms of direction. That's something that I can't even describe, like, where it's coming from. Music in the past... it always used to be me with the shovel just fucking digging and digging and digging – it was so much work. It's still work in the sense that I show up and do the thing, but the more that I spend time in stillness and pursue that state of being – prioritizing "being" instead of "doing"– it's opened up this doorway where ideas find me, and basically I just have to be in tune with those ideas and transcribe them.

I'm curious: you mentioned that the album came together faster than you thought it would. How long did it take from day one to "I'm done with this record"?

God, it was so quick. I started that whole process in the holidays of 2023, and I had the whole record written in seven or eight months? I think it was seven or eight months. Which is wild because usually albums take me years and years and years to write. There's often ideas that I have that'll be something I've been working on for years. That track "Mercury" from Heaven is a Junkyard, that was a track I have had with me for years, but I couldn't crack the code – I didn't know what to do with it. Same with "Prizefighter", that was another one where I had an old voice memo for like... gosh... four or five years? After all that time I finally figured out how to finish that song.

I think the idea of utilizing old family tapes was a pretty smart way to let the listener get a look at your past, your childhood. When picking samples you wanted to use, did you choose moments from tapes that were sentimental to you?

For sure, without a doubt. My goal in using the videotapes as a color to paint with... like, the whole story isn't on the camcorder. Let's say your friend is saying something funny, you're only going to be recording and uploading the best bits of what's going on. If a fight starts, cameras up, the second it's over, cameras go down. It's just the nature of how we function as people, as a society. Especially when it comes to what we share publicly, you're always trying to put your best foot forward and you want people to think "oh he's on this vacation, he's doing this thing, he's doing well for himself." We like to build these stories around ourselves that are super glamorized.

There's something so tactile about working with 8mm tapes. They were expensive. My family was way more likely to record the moments where everyone is laughing, and we're eating great food, and there's people all over. There's so much love in my family, but just like with every family, there's struggles going on behind the scenes, there's tears being shed, and the camcorder isn't picking that up because it's not on. Who wants to film that? I wanted to use these tapes that have such a golden hue to them to me personally. I wanted to take these tapes and add them to narratives that feel way more surreal, way more like a fever dream. I wanted to see how far I can zoom into an autobiographical album. I want people to hear it and feel like they're in my room with my brother in 1995. I want the magnifying glass to feel so close and make people almost feel uncomfortable. I want that closeness, and I want that surrealism. I took those desires as well as my love for folktales, and my fascination with vampires, and I put them into one record.

In reading past interviews with you, as well as just now, you have mentioned your brothers. How many brothers do you have?

I have three brothers.

I also have three brothers!

No way! Where in the lineup do you fit? Oldest, youngest?

I am the second oldest, so I've got one older and two younger.

Okay, that's the same with me! That's so weird.

A major part of this record is the intensity of love that I have for my family. There was such a delicate balance between how I approach dealing with family archive in a way that is tremendously respectful, while at the same time finding these ways to twist these narratives on their head. I wanted to stitch my real memories and these narratives in a way where sometimes you can't really tell what's a part of the quote-unquote, "dream world" and what is a part of reality. That's sort of where the title of the record comes into play, Rarely Do I Dream. We're so quick to label this reality. The more time I spend in meditation, having the utmost priority to find my state of being, really emphasizing that every day... When I come to and I have to start doing the dishes, and going to the grocery store, all that human shit I have to do after meditating for an hour – it occurs to me that so much of this is "the dream." I'm convinced that a huge part of life, you know, a massive goal for why it is that we're here, is that we want to wake up in a dream. I'm finally at a point where I feel like I'm waking up in a dream.

That's really nice to hear that you've got to that point in your life. I wanted to touch on this, and I'm glad you've brought it up. I was really into your last album Heaven Is a Junkyard, and I've heard from interviews you did around that time that you were super into meditation. You mentioned it again just now, and I'm curious, is it still a big thing for you?

It is! I meditate at least once a day. I've got a certain spot in a certain room on a certain couch and I sit there for an hour a day. It gets you to a baseline, a frequency, a wavelength that it takes you to. Sometimes it's impossible to get there because you know, you get into an argument, you're annoyed with someone...

There's no chilling out.

Your dog starts barking, it's frustrating sometimes. I've been meditating for the last two-and-a-half years... almost three years. It's done this thing where it's changed my baseline wavelength. It's this frequency of home. When I meditate, when I go to that space and drift off into that blackness, there's such a rush, but rush has a connotation of something that goes away – it's not that. The more I do this, the more it feels like it's keeping me "at home." It revolutionized my life! It's taken away my anxiety. I used to be riddled with anxiety, I'd have a hard time getting out of bed. Even situations like this, having a conversation with someone I don't know. I would just freak out. Navigating the normalcy of everyday life felt like an uphill battle. But with meditation, going "under the hood" is irreplaceable. I've had therapists help me with the stuff "above the water" of my life, but meditating helps me deal with what's "below the water."

I wanted to point out one of my favorite lyrics on the record off the track "Lucy Takes a Picture":

"Place to fall in love
I wanted to smile
All the camels on the rug
a smoker's river Nile."

It was a "holy shit" moment for me because you were able to lyrically paint a massive picture with something as mundane as a rug. Do you feel like because of your meditative regimen you've taken on over the last few years, do you feel like it has provided clarity in your songwriting and conveying your ideas through your lyrics?

So much clearer! To the point where it shocks me with what it is that's coming out. That goes back to what I mentioned earlier about writing being a tool that teaches me what I'm capable of. I'm all for an idea showing its face and using that as something that can be more malleable. When you're writing a song, you might feel like it means one thing and that's true, it totally does mean what you think it does. However it is that you're perceiving an emotion or art, that's true to you. But you can listen to it more intently and realize that there's way more going on when it comes to the story or details that you don't hear right away.

But to me, there's so much joy exercising those demons and getting that devil off my back. It's one of the ways that music is continual therapy. It could be fear or whatever – whatever is rearing its head, I can put it into this way that is much more manageable for me to deal with now. I can take something scary and use it as a tool to take someone to a much more beautiful and spectral place.

Home movies were obviously a massive push for you to make this album. But I was wondering if there are any films that have impacted you or inspired you?

Oh absolutely! I find myself getting way more inspiration from movies than music, mostly because it's a way different medium. I can directly take those emotions I feel while watching a movie and incorporate it into something I'm writing. Whereas if I'm listening to music, I have to be careful that I'm not directly lifting something from someone.

You don't want to accidentally steal a lyric or chord progression!

[laughs] Exactly!

What movies inspire you the most?

Where do I even begin? I love Jim Jarmusch. Stranger Than Paradise, one of his earlier films. Down By Law, with John Lurie and Tom Waits. There's Mystery Train, which is a fucking amazing movie. Sofia Coppola! Movies like Lost in Translation. The first time I saw that movie, not only the acting, but the setting of it, the power of its environment is something I think about in music constantly. The flesh being put onto the skeleton. It matters so much with how something is being communicated or perceived, and the environment in Lost in Translation is so thick with romance. Every color has a different emotion... I could go on and on about that movie. Wim Wenders and Andrei Tarkovsky are another two of my favorites. Paris, Texas is my number one movie of all time.

That makes perfect sense to me, that checks out! I always take the chance to talk about this when I can, but my all time favorite movie is Bong Joon-ho's Parasite. It gets better with every watch!

Oh my god! I love Parasite!

Every new viewing you notice details that were there the whole time, but you were previously completely oblivious to them.

That's how I felt about Perfect Blue! Do you watch anime?

*Trevor pulls out his newly acquired Japanese copy of Perfect Blue on VHS and tells me about his VHS collection*

Do you have anything that you want people to take away from this record?

Going back to what I said earlier, there's no wrong emotion or perspective to have about this album - or any album really - any piece of art, whether it be a movie or book. Letting something go through the filter of your own soul is so important because that's when something is going to hit you in the way you need. People cling too much to what the artist says in terms of "I wrote this," or "this is what I meant in this song." I try my hardest to avoid that because in many ways I feel it steals from what someone's own intuition is gonna say, or it going through their own filter of their childhood, their traumas. It's so important to me to just let something hit you the way it's going to hit you.

Rarely Do I Dream is out now. Purchase here.
And catch Youth Lagoon out on tour. See all the dates here.