By Cory-LaNeave Jones

April 8, 2025

For those in the know, Trevor Powers, whose moniker Youth Lagoon has been producing indie alternative-style music since the 2010’s recently released a new album  “Rarely Do I Dream” and has a stop for their US tour in San Diego this Thursday at the historic Casbah. I find his syth-pop and jazzy keyboarding to be mesmerizing along with a unique ethereal voice.

Ether, (from the Greek word “aither” referring to the heavens or a purer less tangible substance) is the substance that organic chemists talk about as a solution of aromatic ketones – in Trevor’s usage, that should be key tones – straight off the keys. His music gives a nod to the concept of life and death. Life and afterlife. The liminal spaces between here and there. Freedom and Repression—seemingly speaking in faint breaths of the in-between spaces of our lives.

Trevor released three albums under the moniker Youth Lagoon in the 2010s. Then had a time of self-reflection and searching for interiority and released two albums under his birth name. And then released his 2023 banger Heaven is a Junkyard with hits like Rabbit, Idaho Alien, and The Sling which self-references the album’s title. I first heard these songs on Sirius XMU in my car and I was instantly struck by the unique set of pipes on this singer. It’s a rather unique sound, not loud, not obnoxious, but still eerily draws you in to this shy-sounding, timid witness to the various travesties that can occur in a life of dysfunction.

He just released a second album called Rarely Do I Dream with reflections on what it’s like not being the kid that catches the football (Football), reflections on one of Brian Malarkey’s former restaurants (Seersucker), and an Agatha Christie delight (Gumshoe, Dracula From Arkansas). There’s a lucid video for the song Lucy Takes a Picture that includes Trevor jamming in a bright red pea coat and matching leather eye patch that seems to be a cross between the Pirates of Penzance’s swashbuckling and some deluded super criminal friend of Dr. Evil. As he slowly paces down a central stairway of an old abandoned and boarded building all the while hearing a mild swinging rhythmical back beat playing over some sweet choir-sounding sonics eliciting Enya, followed by Trevor’s light discussions of introspection and synth keyboards.

I had a chance to chat with Trevor for a few minutes before his show in Seattle this past Friday night and got to gain a little more insight into his musical background and general interests.

Corey: I know keyboards have been key in your past, and I was reading, it looked like you were going more with the guitar on the latest album. We can get into that later, but I just want you to know, I really was strongly moved by your music. The last album, the Heaven is a Junkyard {I listened to a lot} and some of the newer stuff, and I really dig it. So I’m looking forward to getting to know you better. So you’re coming to San Diego anyway, [to my research] you were born in San Diego.

Trevor:

It is true, but I have, there’s no emotional attachment because my family moved when I was so young. I was born in San Diego, but my family moved when I was three, and Idaho has been, Idaho has been home ever since. So for a couple years when I was growing up, we would go back and do some family and stuff. So I’ve spent a lot of time in San Diego, but we moved when I was so young that, like I said, there was no imprint on my soul. I got out when I was really little.

Cory:

Okay, okay. No problem. Just throw that one by. So Boise, tell me about what it’s like growing up in Idaho. You’re just day in and day out, peeling potatoes, I imagine. Anything else you guys do out there?

Trevor:

Idaho is the biggest inspiration that I have and such a huge reason for staying is so much of my life outside of home is a tornado where I’m always leaving and there’s a lot of chaos and it’s really beautiful chaos, but it’s still that ever-swirling unstable sense of when you’re out of town. It is just constant discomfort, which I love and it’s always pushing me and stuff. But I travel so much that it is been important to me to have that counterweight. That’s the exact opposite. And that’s Idaho for me.

And what really compels my songwriting, and it’s always informing, especially my lyrics, is the nature of how Idaho feels, especially in small town Idaho. There’s such an underbelly to it all. But then there’s a lot of emotional resonance I have because those have been my circles my whole life. So you see these people, that they have these dreams that they, so a lot of people living in their own heads. And then there, there’s so much love there. But then there’s also a lot of, and this is the case with a lot of places, but there’s so much battles, so many battles with addiction.

And just typical really, not that these are problems isolated to small town communities, but you do see it more when there’s not as much going on that element of escapism. And I pull from that a lot, lot lyrically, I don’t know.

Cory:

I don’t know. I think you see that in small towns. You see that in big towns, just the same from my experience. But I agree.

Trevor:

I would see the heartbeat of it though is different. There’s a different, and I can’t put my finger on the pulse of what exactly it is because obviously metropolitan areas are riddled with problems and the devil on people’s back.

Cory:

[With] The homelessness issue, it’s a key issue here in San Diego and unfortunately a lot of dysfunction goes along hand in hand with that for multiple reasons. But we don’t have a cure for a lot of that. We don’t have a cure for dysfunction, unfortunately. They haven’t medically defined it yet, but it seems to be out there. Right.

Trevor:

Yeah.

Cory-LaNeave Jones:

I came from a small town too, out in North Carolina, actually. [A] Small little town called Greenville. But I moved out here after I finished college and I’ve been here since. But yeah, I can relate to a lot of that. I had kind of a dysfunctional family of my own. And a lot of your lyrics I can get into, I can understand a lot of the different aspects of dealing with things that you talk about. I appreciate all that you’re seeing, all that you’ve been doing.

You’ve had a few different sections of your life here in your musical artistry, and it seems like you started out with Youth Lagoon moniker and then you went back to your named name, your legal name, and then you went back to Youth Lagoon. I don’t know if there’s anything you could say about those transitions you were going through in your life and why you felt at one point you maybe didn’t associate with the title and now you found your way back. That’s kind of an interesting transition, just thinking of an artist’s life, like moving in and out of phases.

Trevor:

Yeah, and that was a lot of it. It turned into something that I no longer recognized, mostly because I didn’t recognize myself anymore. It was coming from this place of complete loss of clarity in my life. When I killed off the Youth Lagoon Project, it was really me staying true to the purity of the project as a whole and not wanting to keep it going just for the sake of the history of it and whatnot.

So I laid it to rest in 2016 and I had to go on these. It was such a huge time for me mentally and spiritually to figure my shit out and be able to explore these other corners of my brain and figure out what it is that I’m trying to say. And beyond that, who am I at my core?

What ended up happening is I had a lot of personal tumultuous because, just complete inner turmoil times and then along with my physical health deteriorated over a time span in that complete loss of control that gave me the world and it gave me clarity. It gave me a much more of a precision on who I am as a person. And creatively, it also opened up doorways that I didn’t know existed.

That’s when I had, that’s when it was in a lot of that healing of my spirit that went hand in hand with reclaiming the youth moniker and taking it into the present moment.

Cory:

So I know I read somewhere in one of the bios, there was some, I dunno if this is a topic you want to talk about or not, there was some sort of medical issue you had that affected your, I dunno if it was the vocal cords, and you have a very unique sound and it’s really, it draws you in. It drew me in so I can speak for myself, but that’s one of the things that I really gleamed onto when I first started hearing your songs like Idaho Alien and Rabbit, I was just drawn in because I wanted to hear it, this light wispy and yet gravelly sort of intricate voice, and you want to hear more and it just kind of captures you and you’re like, all right, how far can we get into this? And I mean, that’s kind of my sense and it’s pretty unique. So props to you just having that gift and props to you for keeping it going.

Trevor:

I appreciate it. Yeah.

Cory:

So is there anything about that experience that was, that I wasn’t clear if that was part of your transition back into the moniker or, …

Trevor:

Yeah, it definitely was because that was the first time I had everything go wrong in life that I was horrified of happening. And that goes back to lack of control. My whole life there’s been that element of being a control freak and wanting everything to be just so, which, that goes against the entire tenets of what it means to be a human. Nothing is in our control. It’s all complete fabrication and we’re led to believe, whether it’s through, I think a lot of it’s just through self-brainwashing, but then also it could be pop culture where there’s that thing of if you just try hard enough and if you just can get your shit together, then you can make your life go according to plan.

But what that dramatically misses the mark on is where the good stuff is, is all the stuff that you would never want to happen. It’s all the adversity. It’s all those challenges that …rip… the rug out from under your legs and sometimes to the point where you feel like you’re left with nothing. And it’s that demolition of personal earthly identity that really does level up your consciousness and your state of awareness.

That’s exactly what happened to me with the health issues. It was in that disruption of where it was that I was going, that the first few months of losing who I thought I was – was horrifying. And it did fill me with so much fear.

But then by about month four, month five, I was like, okay, I’m not going to go. I refuse to go through this experience and not have it be my teacher, not have it be something that’s actually giving my soul some kind of ammunition.

So when I started coming out the other side and my body did finally start healing from what it was that I was going through, it was in that healing that I had these awakenings musically too on a new way to speak about, or I guess just a new channel into my spirit. Youth Lagoon has a history and foundation. That moniker has been around for so many years, but the second that I resurrected it did feel, for all intents and purposes, like a brand new project … because it’s a brand new me. I’m not the same person that I used to be in any way, shape or form.

Cory:

Yeah, I hate to say this, but 2.0 yeah. You’re feelin’ 2.0 right now?!

Trevor:

Yeah.

Cory-LaNeave Jones:

Yeah. There’s so much I like about how you overlay sounds. You’ve got just this kaleidoscope of different things going on in your music. You’ve got, in some of it, it sounds like home video verbiage, and then you’ve got these ambient sounds and you’ve got this jazzy keyboard going on – What motivations, maybe that’s not the right – what music did you listen to and do you yourself find yourself gravitating to most? Are there any influential musicians that you gravitate to that you think kind of guide you in your quest for expression?

Trevor:

For sure. But I would say beyond that, I’m not the kind of person that I hear something and I want to recreate it. If anything, I want to take that feeling of what an artist has given me and how do I then relay that baton in my own way, going through the filter of my own experiences … and … traumas and joys … and … what have you, and have it go.

Once it becomes my own inner world, then that’s what I have to give to any creative idea. There’s always The Durutti Column. I love so much, such an incredible discography from front to back. I don’t know if you’re familiar, Cocteau Twins. They’re another project I love so much. But then I also watch, I’m listening to endless music from so many different time periods. I grew up with listening to the Beach Boys and Elvis, and then lots of eighties electronic music, early nineties, electronic. But I also, I’m …

Cory-LaNeave Jones:

Like Roxy Music or are you thinking more like, I’m thinking Eno?,  and I don’t know….

Trevor:

Yeah, massive Brian Eno fan. Especially the collaborations Eno has had with Daniel Lanois and [for] piano, I take a lot of inspiration from Kate Bush‘s approach as well as artists like Harold Budd. So I love so much of what is there just through the history of music, but also things like film and books, there’s that – There’s always that feeling of when something hits me over the head, I have that compulsion to just go make shit.

Cory:

I hear you.

Trevor:

I love movies. Anytime I want to write music, one of the very first things I do is I find a good film and sit down and watch it and just have it be something thing that is, that’s always informing what I make.

Cory:

What films or types of films do you gravitate towards then?

Trevor:

I want to say any certain types, but I know it, when I see it, I’ll get recommendations from certain people that I trust that are also into films and it’ll be filmmakers like Wim Wenders who I’m a huge fan of. Wings of Desire is one of his films. It’s one of my all time favorites that actually was a big inspiration on a song I wrote from Heaven is a Junkyard called Trapeze Artist. And filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Andrei Tarkovsky, just tons of people. I just love, it goes back to anyone who feels like on their own pursuit, their own road.

Cory:

You mentioned the Cocteau twins, so I was thinking of the old ancient filmmaker. He did some really wild stuff back in the early days [Jean Cocteau]. Dunno if you, do you … have a favorite film?

I’ll have to text you back [Cocteau films I was trying to recall: The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, and Testament of Orpheus]. But yeah, yeah, there’s this really cool artsy thing he did back in the day. I think you’d dig it.

Trevor:

Cool.

Cory-LaNeave Jones:

Yeah, and who I’ve been digging also is Paul Schrader. He’s done so many really cool, interesting movies. I’m trying to read his book, Transcendental Style in Film, and there’s a lot of nuggets in there about just life in general and the dynamics of: how do you deal with life, like [Schrader] being like a Calvinist, he reflects on it religiously. How do I transcend this life? There’s multiple ways of thinking about it. Is my body -, am I a prisoner to [or in] my body? How does that affect me? I think there’s a lot there.

Trevor:

Yeah. Yeah.

Cory-LaNeave Jones:

But let’s see. There’s lyrics, you were talking about lyrics. Let’s see, I had a few things here …  I can get to the end of Idaho Alien and you say “Don’t cry.” And that ending is, it’s kind like a lullaby. So I don’t know if that’s your intent to leave it, that’s the bow you wanted to put on it? Or if I was thinking too much, is that just me inferring there?

Trevor:

No, I think that’s kind of spot on. But beyond lullaby, because it was approached, especially the chord progression as a chorus was very, it has that lullaby feeling to it where it’s like a fucked up mutant lullaby. But then it’s in this context of dealing with these really hyper personal, but then also you’ve got two… strangely detached characters.

Cory:

You’ve got a clawfoot bath filled with blood and I just think of that Jacques-Louis David’s Death of Marat painting and I’m like, oh man, how did I get here? And then you say, “I will fear no frontier.” And so I’m like, frontiers are wide opening spaces. They’re empty spaces. How do I, …. [how] am I not going to not fear emptiness? Right. Wasn’t sure. That’s kind of what I was getting, but I don’t know if I’m close to the mark or not.

Trevor:

Yeah, well I mean that definitely is close. And I would say; however, you’re power, something’s washing over you. That is the truth. That’s one of the beauties of music or any art form is the second that something is created and pushed out there, it takes on whatever shape it needs to take on and whatever it needs to become to anyone participating with that piece and with this new record, Rarely Do I Dream, there’s been so many because shows the tour just started…

And it’s really interesting because at the end of every show there’s people coming up to me talking about certain songs and how it is that they’re perceiving them. And I am always a little bit hesitant to say too much about my own perspective because what it means to me is obviously the origin of where those emotions come from and what gives everything that initial fuel. But how it is, it’s going into someone’s own ears. And it goes back to the filter of someone’s own soul. What it ends up becoming is going to be so different depending on the person, especially dealing with lyrics at the core of lyrics though, to me that’s poetry. It’s my eternal wrestling match with why I’m here on this planet, what it is that I’m doing, where it is that I’m going love and death and the cycle within.

Cory:

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I feel that. So how’s the tour going so far? How many dates do you have in total? And you said you’re just starting out, so it must be exciting getting going

Trevor:

Is been going so well. It’s been so much fun. I think we’re on show, tonight’s going to be show five. So it just started.

But show three was a hometown show and weirdly enough, my keyboard broke on stage.

My keyboard of 15 years, it’s been with me all around the world so many times over.

And then it happened to break in the middle of the show when I was at home or playing in Boise.

And so I had to cut the set short, I think it was seven songs and the keyboard broke.

But the weirdest part, as bizarre as it was with it dying on stage at a hometown shows, the weirdest part is it died during my song Seersucker. And there’s a line that says when the old piano broke, the music went away.

Cory:

That’s deep. That’s really deep.

Trevor:

Yeah, it’s pretty wild. That’s another thing, it’s with music, there’s that, it does feel like a communication with some other dimension at times. It’s that participation with something that’s existing outside of time where you’re playing. It feels like you’re playing with timelines.

Cory:

That line happens. Just before you talk about Colt Revolver and his coat killed Jesse James. So somewhere else you were talking about cowboys. So were cowboys a big part of your childhood too. I guess that was Rabbit. I’m thinking of when “the cowboy learned to shout.”

Trevor:

I got cowboy shit all over my lyrics. I mean that’s home for me. I go to rodeos on a regular basis. My mom is in them. My mom has been on a drill team for years. She just stepped down from the drill team due to her getting older and her having some health issues. But yeah, so much of my life is surrounded by cowboys.

Cory:

That’s cool. That’s Cool.

That’s my world.

Trevor:

Okay. Okay. Good to know. That explains a lot. So you spent a lot of time in the rodeo.

Cory:

Yeah, lots of time in the rodeo.

Trevor:

Yeah.

Cory-LaNeave Jones:

That’s cool. A lot of rodeo songs. Okay. Anyways, thank you for your time. I know you’ve got to get going. You got a show to put on. I really appreciate it. I’ll send you guys a copy of what I throw together here, but I look forward, hopefully I can catch you when you’re here in San Diego.

 Alright, have a great performance, I guess “Break a leg” as they say.

Trevor:

Okay. Alright, will do. Alright,

…..

Youth Lagoon is performing at the indie-cult-classic location near the San Diego International Airport, on of the corner of Kettner and Laurel (2501 Kettner Blvd., San Diego, CA 92101), The Casbah. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and Valley James opens at 8:30 p.m.