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Jul 13, 2015 Youth Lagoon By Christopher Roberts

Last Friday Youth Lagoon gave out free 7-inch singles at select record stores featuring the new song “The Knower.” The records also included a handwritten URL that led to a new website (www.savagehillsballroom.com) that appeared to announce a new album entitled Savage Hills Ballroom. Now the album’s details have been announced and a stream of the horn backed “The Knower” has been posted to YouTube (you can check it out below via NPR, who premiered it).

Savage Hills Ballroom, the follow-up to 2013’s Wondrous Bughouse, will be due out September 25 via Fat Possum. The album was recorded in Bristol, England by Youth Lagoon’s main creative force Trevor Powers and co-produced/mixed/engineered by Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Gravenhurst). The album has partly influenced by the passing of one of Powers’ closest friends, which forced Powers to cancel one of the tours for Wondrous Bughouse. “That experience made me start viewing Youth Lagoon differently,” said Powers in a press release announcing the album. “It was a complete refocus for me.”

The press release also touches on Savage Hills Ballroom‘s dark lyrics, explaining that the song “Kerry” is “the story of Powers’ revered uncle whose drug addiction led him to running from the law for most of his adult life,” while the track “Highway Patrol Stun Gun” “imagines Biblical end-times through the lens of the recent cases of police brutality.”

Last week Powers spoke to the New York centered website Bedford + Bowery about “The Knower,” telling them it was one of the first songs he started to work on for the album. “To me it really embodies this aspect of our self-obsessed culture of ignoring our faults and failures,” he said. “I had so many parts of my personality that had gone purposely ignored for so long because they were too shitty to look at. It’s based around a lot of repetition and making parts of the track, such as the horn sections, sound like voices that are all realizing these aspects of oup>

Below is “The Knower,” followed by the album’s tracklist and Youth Lagoon’s upcoming tour dates.

Savage Hills Ballroom Tracklist:

1. Officer Telephone
2. Highway Patrol Stun Gun
3. The Knower
4. No One Can Tell
5. Doll’s Estate
6. Rotten Human
7. Kerry
8. Again
9. Free Me
10. X-Ray

Youth Lagoon Tour Dates:

9/10: Filling Station - Bozeman, MT
9/11: Top Hat - Missoula, MT
9/12: Egyptian Theatre - Boise, ID
9/21: Rough Trade - Brooklyn, NY
9/24: XOYO - London, UK
9/26: Cafe De La Danse - Paris, France
9/28: Rotonde, Botanique - Brussels, Belgium
9/30: Bitterzoet - Amsterdam, Netherlands
10/2: Magnet Club - Berlin, Germany
10/4: Jazzhouse - Copenhagen, Denmark