• News

• All

Jan 04, 2024 By Mark Redfern Photography by Tyler T. Williams

Youth Lagoon (aka Trevor Powers) has shared a new song, “Football,” via a music video. It’s out now as a limited edition seven-inch via Fat Possum. Rodaidh McDonald co-produced the song and Caleb Halter directed the video. Watch and listen below.

Powers had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Football’ is really a celebration of failure. Society has a terrible habit of only recognizing achievement while glossing over the greatness in the shadows. We’re so distracted trying to earn love, worth and value that we forget it’s something we inherently already have. I wanted to play with this idea through the lens of sports ‘cuz, in a lot of ways, sports are the truest religion. When I was young, it was the only way I knew how to connect with my dad. We didn’t have a lot in common, but we could both throw the ball. There were rules and rituals we could see eye-to-eye on. We didn’t have to argue over who was right or wrong. The difference in my family was, it didn’t matter how good I was. The act of just throwing a ball was communion. It didn’t matter if I caught it. I love my Dad for that.”

After releasing two albums under his given name, last year Powers revived his Youth Lagoon moniker and released a new album under that name, Heaven Is a Junkyard, in June via Fat Possum.

When Heaven Is a Junkyard was announced, Youth Lagoon shared the album’s first single, “Idaho Alien,” via a music video. “Idaho Alien” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then he shared the album’s second single, “Prizefighter,” via a music video, and announced some new tour dates. The third single was “The Sling” (also one of our Songs of the Week).

As Youth Lagoon, Powers released three albums: 2011’s The Year of Hibernation, 2013’s Wondrous Bughouse, and 2015’s Savage Hills Ballroom. Then he retired the name in 2016 and released two albums simply as Trevor Powers: 2018’s Mulberry Violence and 2020’s surprise-released Capricorn.

“I felt like I was in a chokehold,” Powers said in a previous press release of the initial name change. “Even though it was my music, I lost my way. In a lot of ways, I lost myself.”

He added: “My mind has always been a devil. It tells me terrible things—like I’m worthless, ugly, or broken. It’s like a motel TV stuck on a channel that won’t shut off, with static and endless late-night ads and preachers screaming about the end of the world.”

Things took a turn for the worse in October 2021, when Powers had a bad reaction to an over-the counter medicine that a press release says turned his stomach into a “non-stop geyser of acid” and coated Powers “larynx and vocal cords for eight months.”

“I saw seven doctors and multiple specialists. I lost over 30 pounds. No one could help me,” said Powers.

By Christmas that year, he could no longer speak. “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to speak again, let alone sing,” he said. “It all felt symbolic in a way. I’d been swallowing fear all my life and now here it was coming back up.”

Following this trying time, Powers had a renewed focus on his songwriting, writing about home rather than the larger world. “Family, neighbors, and grim reapers,” said Powers. “I’ve always written about far away things, but the best material has been right in front of me this whole time in Idaho.”

Summing up the album, Powers added: “Heaven Is a Junkyard is about all of us. It’s stories of brothers leaving for war, drunk fathers learning to hug, mothers falling in love, neighbors stealing mail, cowboys doing drugs, friends skipping school, me crying in the bathtub, dogs catching rabbits, and children playing in tall grass.”

Read our 2011 interview with Youth Lagoon.

Read our 2015 interview with Youth Lagoon.

Read our 2023 interview with Youth Lagoon.

Subscribe to Under the Radar’s print magazine.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.