As Youth Lagoon, Trevor Powers released three albums of neo-psychedelia embellished by indie flourishes and experimental Americana. Having shed that persona, the Idaho musician is back with ‘Mulberry Violence’, an album of distinctive colour and textuality that operates as a kind of soundscape-happening along the lines of Arca, Perfume Genius and - at a pinch - Anohni.
It’s dense work. Tracks lurch and sweat in dirgy intensity, and while the arrangements and mixing are notably forward-thinking, strong melodies are frequently undermined by an approach to production that overloads and obfuscates clear musical messaging.
Powers relocated to a Texan residential studio complex called Sonic Ranch to record the album, and the result may be work that lacks a single guiding principle. It’s bedroom production writ large.
That said, the cerebral nature of the album is something to behold. Powers has employed innovative vocal layering techniques on Dicegame and Ache, which distort and synthesise his voice in a way that is frequently captivating.
Additionally, the sheer volume of unusual sounds on ‘Mulberry Violence’ makes it a brain expanding experience. Clad in Skin nods and slaps with humorous dexterity, while Playwright employs a host of far eastern motifs with a kind of avant-garde intensity. It is a song of cold, confusing stillness that washes over you slowly, like finding out an old acquaintance has been dead for months.
Despite its strengths - and there are many - there is an overloaded intellectualism at play on ‘Mulberry Violence’ that gets in the way of already highly nuanced emotions. Additionally, Powers seems to want to make his voice sound as weird as possible. This is less of a problem in the hands of veterans like Björk or Thom Yorke, but even with them, the approach can sound gimmicky and annoying.
Avant-garde music is a very tricky thing to pull off, and in many ways Powers has succeeded in producing an album so full of ideas and individualism that it will almost certainly look influential in 10 years. But upon finishing the album, one is left strangely unrewarded, and there is not much here that is that memorable. It's a bit like walking through an art installation on a killer hangover as richly conceived masterpieces end up doing your head in. Maybe that, too will change in time.
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