Album Review: Youth Lagoon - Wondrous Bughouse

A lot of terms get bandied about fairly recklessly in reviews and press releases these days. Everybody's always “going back to their roots”, or “transcending” their genre in an effort to “keep it real”, or something to that effect. We see these words and phrases all the time now – yet they mean nothing, because their flagrant overuse by critics, labels, management and fans alike has robbed them of any gravitas they may once have held. So, too, does this apply to words like “atmospheric” and “psychedelic” – which brings us to Wondrous Bughouse, the sophomore full-length from Idaho-based muso Trevor Powers, aka Youth Lagoon.

It would be shamefully easy to just call Wondrous Bughouse “atmospheric” and be done with it. But you know what? You deserve better than that, and it would serve Powers and a million other aspiring “neo-psychedelia” musicians to understand that atmosphere is not simply a matter of drenching everything to its balls in reverb and calling it a day. And psychedelic qualities, for that matter, are so much more than just using phases and warps so the whole thing sounds like it was made by detuned instruments in a flooded World War II-era bunker a kilometre underground. These are rudimentary parts of a much larger, far more interesting whole that all too often goes unexplored – and, sure enough, Powers seems unwilling or unable to, despite the analogy, strive for real depth.

Wondrous Bughouse is an all-too-relaxed amble that lingers a little too long in, and moves a little too glacially through, a park where the only scenery worth gazing at is your shoes. Is it pleasant? Sure. Easy? Definitely. Worth it? Only if you're having trouble sleeping.