Youth Lagoon Heaven Is a Junkyard LP (Ultra Clear Vinyl)

TAS Rated 5/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the October 2023 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

With whispers of country, 'Heaven Is a Junkyard' is mutant Americana in a world of love, drugs, storytelling, and miracles - held together by Powers' voice and an upright piano. "If a lyric wasn't right, a song wasn't right," says Powers, who scrapped two-and-a-half albums worth of material because it "wasn't honest." "'Heaven Is a Junkyard' is about all of us. It's stories of brothers leaving for war, drunk fathers learning to hug, mothers falling in love, neighbors stealing mail, cowboys doing drugs, friends skipping school, me crying in the bathtub, dogs catching rabbits, and children playing in tall grass," says Powers. Throughout the album, he stitches together a lyrical style that feels both punk and western. "Daddy come home, and Daddy's on junk," Powers sings on "Idaho Alien" - nestled between a saloon-style piano and a rhythmic hiss that sounds like a baby monitor. "Prizefighter", the album's third track, was written while watching a VHS of "Drugstore Cowboy." Against a gauzy curtain of lap steel guitar and a CR78 drum machine, he explores the bond between two brothers, leaving it undefined what is fact and what is fiction. "Tommy left for war with no goodbye. I never got a chance to ask him why," he sings. "The Sling", a song Powers refers to as "the album's core," is a ghostly and naked piano ballad. We hear each line like a voyeur peeping through a crack in the wall. "On a lonely street, children still play. Families still eat," he sings. 'Heaven Is a Junkyard' is a phrase Powers wrote down in his journal after watching a neighbor's farmhouse catch fire. "I wasn't even sure what those words meant at the time," he says. "I'm not sure I still do." But when the album's title is heard at the end of "The Sling", it feels substantial.

Youth Lagoon's Heaven is a Junkyard is an intimate, stunning, and quietly confident record.