Youth Lagoon 

The Year of Hibernation

Man, when my junior high punk band recorded on a four track in a bedroom, we didn't come anywhere near the depth of Youth Lagoon and there were three of us! Really, we should have forsaken the screamo for synthesizers, but we still would have fallen short of Boise-based Trevor Powers's addictive solo project.

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Here's an album for floating down the river and lazily admiring the pines on the mountains you see every day. "Afternoon" embodies that image. A twinkling piano and wistful whistle lead into Powers's youthful voice amid layers of synth and catchy drum loops. It's slow and dreamy, like you can close your eyes and still see the sunshine. "July" does the same thing. It winds up slowly until those hip-hop-esque beats build and join with a crescendo of hand-picked guitar fuzz and keyboards.

It's a more pop-minded effort than, say, Into the Blue by The Album Leaf, a similarly constructed one-man bedroom party. Like any good pop, there's a formula, and here's The Year of Hibernation's: start simple and percussion-less, add on a few more instruments and climax with a cacophony of far-off, dancey sounds. The songs don't differ too much from one another. But that doesn't matter: It's sweet and summery in its entirety.

Youth Lagoon plays the Top Hat Wed., July 18, at 9 PM. $14/$12 advance.

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