Youth Lagoon – Savage Hills Ballroom
Released: September 25, 2015
Rating: 84/100

Isn’t it beautiful when a bedroom recording project blooms into something significant? Trevor Powers has been releasing music under the Youth Lagoon moniker since 2010 but his music has always sounded like a private project that just happened to find its way out into the world. Both of his previous LP’s, The Year ofHibernation (2011) and Wondrous Bughouse (2013), sound sonically adventurous but emotionally reserved. With the release of Youth Lagoon’s third LP Savage Hills Ballroom, Powers finds new ways to experiment while opening his sound to a wider audience and the result is a confidently ambitions and consistently satisfying indie rock record.

Savage Hills Ballroom is a bright collection of indie chamber pop that relies just as heavily on drum machine patterns and synths as it does sprawling orchestral textures. In the midst of Powers’ collage of sounds,