With Wondrous Bughouse, Powers has deftly managed his expanded musical toolset to craft an impressively sophisticated and compelling—yet often unsettling—collection of psych-noise arrangements, with much to burrow into and explore on repeat listens.
Wondrous Bughouse is a delicious collage: provocative, allusive and consistently engaging.
This record broadens Powers' musical and lyrical scope into something universal in a literal and figurative sense, evoking the cosmos, heaven, and hell.
Remarkable in both ambition and execution, Powers' second record is indeed wondrous.
The contrast between the maturity of song-craft and production on the album and Powers’ continuing embrace of the fearless creativity of youth make for a sound that directly confronts notions of coming of age without ignoring what came before.
Wondrous Bughouse is a warm, melodic, enchanting delight, a densely layered yet still lo-fi pop album that stands up against the more psychedelic hallmarks of The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala and more. The buzz around Youth Lagoon is only going to grow, and Wondrous Bughouse should be an album to immerse yourself in as soon as possible.
As effortlessly rich as 'Wondrous Bughouse' seems for the listener, it's evident this record took Powers to places he wishes he’d never been. Darkness has never sounded so gloriously technicolor.
He’s growing within himself and outward, emerging with work that’s as mystical and memorable as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Wondrous Bughouse, with its epic sprawl and quaint curiosity, successfully captures through its music the idea that the smaller you are, the easier you’re dazzled and overwhelmed by the world around you.
Like Animal Collective, Youth Lagoon craft modernist pop so perfectly of its time that we're hardly aware of how much time has passed.
A technicolour dream of an album, drenched to the soul in lysergide, sometimes bumping into brilliance, sometimes pouring out like miles of unspooling tape onto the studio floor, uncontained and uncontrollable.
Powers has turned “bedroom pop” into a visceral and emotional experience. While Wondrous Bughouse may not be for everyone, it certainly pushes new barriers.
Tiptoeing through the dark fairytale forests of ‘Sleep Paralysis’ can be fun, but this is so woozy-sounding it should come with a warning not to operate heavy machinery while listening.
Featuring a bulked up track listing and an extending running time, in addition to a more assured vocal performance and a captivating theme, Wondrous Bughouse sees Trevor Powers emerge a solo artist who is rapidly completing the transition from promising to accomplished.
Wondrous Bughouse is an undeniably impressive-sounding album that will please fans who loved The Year of Hibernation for its intricate sonics, but those who empathized with its emotions might feel a tad disconnected.
The density of its production and the slipperiness of its song structures ensures that this album isn’t for everyone.
What was once unobtrusive is now loud and colourful. Apart from the soapy keyboards, none of this sounds like Youth Lagoon as we knew it.
Wondrous Bughouse and the end result fits in as much with the title as it did on his debut–replace the hazy electronics of the debut with the drowning hall of mirrors mania of the sequel–but it’s nowhere near as immediate. Still, it’s fitting: as Power develops as a songwriter and producer, he tests what fits into his maturing vision.
With both the humor and production style of his densely layered music remaining overwrought, Wondrous Bughouse leaves a distinct impression that it was a lot more fun to make than it is to listen to.
Wondrous Bughouse doesn’t expand Youth Lagoon’s sound so much as pour neon-colored Kool-Aid onto it until it’s diluted to a point where it’s almost difficult to hold onto much of anything in these songs.
Experimental music is supposed to take you by surprise and open your mind to new sounds and song formulas. Wondrous Bughouse can’t qualify as an experimental album because there’s nothing here that you haven’t heard before.
'Wondrous Bughouse' is a significant improvement over 'The Year of Hibernation', with a much more captivating soundscape that mingles Beach House and Animal Collective with a pinch of Fleet Foxes.
I LOVED this album when it came out!
I don't really appreciate its obvious influences as much anymore (non-coincidentally produced by a guy who worked the soundboards on AnCo's 'Merriweather Post Pavilion'). But as someone who lived a few years in Idaho, I personally say this is still an all-time great Idaho album.
I LOVED this album when it came out!
I don't really appreciate its obvious influences as much anymore (non-coincidentally produced by a guy who worked the soundboards on AnCo's 'Merriweather Post Pavilion'). But as someone who lived a few years in Idaho, I personally say this is still an all-time great Idaho album.
'Wondrous Bughouse' is a significant improvement over 'The Year of Hibernation', with a much more captivating soundscape that mingles Beach House and Animal Collective with a pinch of Fleet Foxes.
Though the experience of this album is ultimately underwhelming, Youth Lagoon accomplishes the rare task of writing a song everyone should hear. If nothing else give yourself the gift of "Raspberry Cane."
1 | Through Mind and Back 2:31 | 97 |
2 | Mute 5:58 | 100 |
3 | Attic Doctor 3:52 | 100 |
4 | The Bath 4:47 | 100 |
5 | Pelican Man 5:07 | 100 |
6 | Dropla 5:56 | 100 |
7 | Sleep Paralysis 5:34 | 100 |
8 | Third Dystopia 5:01 | 100 |
9 | Raspberry Cane 6:40 | 100 |
10 | Daisyphobia 5:19 | 100 |
#35 | / | Paste |
#45 | / | Stereogum |
#54 | / | musicOMH |
#111 | / | Under the Radar |