YOUTH LAGOON aka Trevor Powers talks
anxiety, adulation and the creation of a critically acclaimed, partially
therapeutic album recorded in a garage. ANDY HAZEL leans in a little closer.
“I still find it strange answering questions about my mind,”
Trevor Powers says quietly down the line from his home in Boise, Idaho, snowfall almost audible in the background. “You do
start to get used to it after a while. But, it’s strange to me mainly because I
don’t know how to explain things, I’m better at singing than talking.” While he
may doubt his ability with words, emails from empathetic fans around the world
attest to the power of his lyrics. His gentle warmth and quiet enthusiasm
throughout the interview seem slightly at odds with the fragile lost soul
haunting the songs of his album The Year
of Hibernation.
Most performers draw a line between writing music for
personal reasons and seeking an audience for it, dividing what they feel
comfortable expressing from what is off limits. For Powers, a singer who strongly
identifies with the often overwhelming honesty of songwriter Daniel
Johnston, drawing that line is a curious prospect. “I don’t know if I have decided yet!” he says laughing
loudly. “I write songs about what I feel and ideas I want to express, I don’t
really think about what I can or cannot say or should and shouldn’t say; I’m just
writing. I haven’t been analysing it that much, not until someone asks me
about it anyway,” he says with an audible grin.
Previously a student at Boise State University who wrote and
recorded music in his spare time, in 2010 Powers was forced to choose between
continuing to pay for counselling sessions that had been helping him to manage
his chronic anxiety, or to record an album. Recorded over a bitter winter, The Year of Hibernation is the
luxuriously woolly yet discomfortingly tight result.
“When I write, part of what is going on stems from personal
experiences, but also from analysing what’s going on around me, and I’d say that
process is partially therapeutic.” Though the album revels in its own intimate beauty, rich with
poetic snapshots of times and places, Powers is still unsure whether
the album was ‘successful’ in helping him deal with the issues that prompted
its creation. “I think so, but I still have a weird mind,” he says with
another, slightly defensive, laugh. “It's always therapeutic dealing with
things, growing and learning, but I don’t think you put something on paper and
it’s dealt with just like that. You’re constantly learning and
growing and you just get better, or wiser, about managing," he pauses in contemplation. "Being busy helps. It helps to keep my mind on other things,
when you’re put in different circumstances, you have different anxieties,” he says
cautiously. “It’s always one of those things you’re dealing with, but a lot of
people don’t talk about it so much, I actually think it’s really common, but
isn’t spoken about very often.”
With intentions this raw and uniquely rendered, it's perhaps unsurprising his music has had
similarly beneficial effects on other people dealing with anxiety, though
he’s hesitant to take on the role of teacher or success story. “People do
write to me and say: ‘I’ve heard you write stuff about anxiety and dealing with
your mind’, but really people’s minds are structured so differently, it comes
down to that person figuring out their own way. I don’t know how much help I
can be directly, but I’m really glad that my music meant something to them.”
Playing his music live is something Powers has only recently considered. “For the most part I went into
recording the album with the mindset of making exactly what I wanted to,
without thinking about how I’d play it live. Once it was done I was like ‘now
what? How do I make it happen?’” he pauses. “It was a big process for about
four months as far as getting everything together and figuring things out. Like
how to use my beat machine and make all the beats happen away from me on stage.
I have one person playing with me live, Logan [Hyde] who does the guitar, so
with just two people on stage we have to figure out ways to do things. It has a
different feel than the album because that was made in such a specific
environment.”
Fortunately, Powers finds that revisiting the songs so often
doesn’t lessen their emotional impact, an impact that many live reviews find
compelling. “That’s the only way I know how to play,” he says. “Music to me
takes me back to certain places and events. As for when a show starts, it’s
almost impossible for me not to think about when it was written and what was
going on, it’s just as emotional if
not more so. Playing them over and over, reliving that over and over, I don’t
mind that. I don’t know why,” he pauses, “maybe it’s just because I really
enjoy it but then…man I don’t know if there is even an answer to that
question!” he laughs again.
Despite writing the album alone, and having spent very
little time by himself since the glowing reviews arrived and incessant touring
began, Powers has found inspiration to write a new batch of songs in his
constantly shifting environment, “I’m just always writing and working on ideas.
I can’t say if it’s more personal than what I’ve done, but the songs definitely
act as time capsules. All my music is like that, especially now that I’m going
on tour and working on songs in hotel rooms, they come across in a totally
different way than if I’m writing at home, and these are times I want to
remember.”
One environment that is a constant for him is his hometown
of Boise, a place he mentions at every opportunity and the importance of which
is underlined by a tattoo of Idaho on his arm, next to the words ‘Be still’. “I
think Idaho is one of the most underrated places in the world,” he says keenly.
“The other night I went for a drive into the mountains and…they’re always
amazing to me. Some of the Sawtooth Mountains and parts of Idaho National Park
are so beautiful, it’s very much a part of who I am.” Here’s hoping he doesn’t
lose this connection anytime soon.
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