Artist Spotlight: Youth Lagoon

I've never been to Boise, ID, but a handful of preconceived notions and a perfunctory google search yielding the headline of "Non-profit donates $10,000 toward Idaho Suicide Prevention Hotline" have led me to believe that perhaps I'm not missing much. To my knowledge, the city of Boise is notorious as a place stuck between an archaic past and a bright future, with recent entrepreneurial generations putting their best foot forward in the attempt to tame the expansive Idaho landscape and to sprout an environmentally conscious city from the depths of Mother Nature's creative prowess. The money-minded city-slickers aren't the only ones leaving their mark on that staggering stretch of America, however. For as the townsfolk of the great Northwest get up and go about their quotidian affairs, something bigger than that yet subtle as a raindrop into the sea is coming to fruition beneath their very feet. Somewhere in a dark and damp Boise basement is Trevor Powers, the one-man force behind recently fabricated Youth Lagoon, endeavoring to bridge the daunting gap between past and present, to truly compromise his city's role as a naturalist's Eden and a playground for tycoons. With his debut LP under his new moniker, entitled The Year of Hibernation, Powers is doing just that. In listening to "Afternoon", a number built on synthesized instrumentation alongside the natural simplicity of whistle-based melodies, Powers has showcased his ability to create surreal, layered tracks that sound out with the poise of not just one man, but nature itself. Simple yet elegant, affecting but understated - The Year of Hibernation is a young man's compelling realization of his insignificance amongst nature and humankind, as well as his general, beautiful indifference toward that fact. I guess that means one more apathetic soul for Boise's suicide prevention team to keep an eye on.

Stream some Youth Lagoon tracks over at Pitchfork, or visit their Facebook.