Free Music Monday: Youth Lagoon "Dropla"

Artist: Youth Lagoon
Track: "Dropla"
From: Wondrous Bughouse LP
Label: Fat Possum
Released: March 5, 2013

After his from-out-of-nowhere breakout in 2011, Trevor Powers is back with a much-awaited second album for Youth Lagoon. It's called, wonderfully, Wondrous Bughouse, and the first single from it, "Dropla," gives a definite sense of the direction the record's heading.

The Year of Hibernation, Powers' Youth Lagoon debut, clearly took Mercury Rev's 1998 magnum opus Deserter's Songs as its model, on "Dropla" there's a density that moves away from such whimsical, orchestral elegance to one of Dave Fridmann's stranger, fuzzier, more cluttered productions.

Powers' voice still carries intense associations with Jonathan Donahue and Wayne Coyne, and anyone who likes their music to match quirk with striving, uplift, and grandeur is in the right place. "You'll never die," he repeats, over and over, as a dizzying storm of synth sounds stirs up a stirring sensibility; the song gathering over six swirling, swelling minutes.

• Youth Lagoon, "Dropla"