Youth Lagoon Rarely Do I Dream LP

TAS Rated 4.5/5 Music, 4.5/5 Sonics in the Fall 2025 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Youth Lagoon — the alias of Idaho-based producer and songwriter Trevor Powers — announces his 2025 album, Rarely Do I Dream, out via Fat Possum. Rarely Do I Dream is Youth Lagoon's most comprehensive and audacious album to date. It's a treasure trove of home movies, twangy fuzz guitars, sun-bleached synths, classical pianos, blown-out drums, and Powers' spellbinding melodies, all which feel like an old photograph that's been reanimated in a strange and distant future.

Rooted in love and childhood memoir, Rarely Do I Dream is a triumph of American gothic imagination — where storybook innocence dissolves into a radioactive billow of teenage drifters, drug-addled hustlers, and old-world folklore. Drifting between propulsive electronica and hallucinatory rock songs, Powers' singular voice always glows front and center as the neon road sign pointing home.

Recorded with co-producer and mixer/engineer Rodaidh McDonald, Rarely Do I Dream marks a seismic transformation, a mammoth leap forward, and an instant, indelible landmark in Youth Lagoon's revered discography. With a profound love and dedication to family, along with his own brand of genre-bending noir rock, Powers has achieved what he set out to do.

"I wanted to make an album that feels like life itself…" says Powers.

The album features the haunting though simple melodies Youth Lagoon is known for, compelling lyrics, and equally mesmerizing instrumental hooks. [Trevor] Powers' turn to a darker, full band sound on this album skillfully avoids sacrificing the intimacy or intentionality that marks his previous work.