Song Exploder - Youth Lagoon - The Knower

Episode Date: November 16, 2015

Youth Lagoon is the moniker of Trevor Powers, who has been releasing albums under the name since 2011. In this episode, Trevor breaks down “The Knower,” the lead single from his newest record, Savage Hills Ballroom. He talks about how the idea for the song started by manipulating sampled vocals, and how he flew to Bristol to record the album with producer Ali Chant. This episode is sponsored by Hover (use offer code LAGOON), Sony Legacy Recordings presenting the new Bob Dylan Box set, andMeUndies.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. Trevor Powers has put out three records under the name Youth Lagoon. His most recent album features this song, The Knower. For this episode, I spoke to Trevor from his rehearsal space in Boise, Idaho. Coming up, Trevor talks about why he intentionally put himself in an uncomfortable environment when trying to make music, and how this song dealt with. with some very personal issues about self-image and self-awareness.

My name is Trevor Powers. I go by Youth Lagoon when I make music. I remember, you know, like being really overwhelmed about the way I had viewed myself for a really long time. I think when we look in the mirror, we only really see what we want to see. It's easy to focus on your strong points and get consumed with that and forget about negative areas of your life or things that you need to work on. It's easy to ignore the shitty parts of your life, you know, and I think writing this song was sort of my way of dealing with that. I love the idea of incorporating voice samples, and I think that's where the song really spawned from. I started sampling voices and stacking them and messing around with the idea of repetition and using 16th notes and really driving the song with that.

So throughout the song, there's the ah, ah, ah, ah. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to really emphasize human voices that were pitched way down or pitched way up throughout the entire track and used that as the glue that really holds the rhythm together. My goal was really to make the song sounds completely engulfed in voices. I want to make a certain sound first. I want to be the first person to make a guitar sound this one. way or a keyboard sound this way or a computer sound this way, you know, be like, how the hell do they make that noise? I love that about music. After I had been working on the programming aspects, it was just me and a piano. And then from that point on was when I started figuring out the melodies and the chord structures. We ended up choosing a whirlitzer because of the tremolo.

It gave it a little more depth. The song starts very subtle. And so the first rhythmic elements that you hear, I wanted something that sounded very large and bombastic. Because the rest of the song is, it's pretty straight, and the percussion keeps things fairly in line. With this guitar section, I wanted a picking rhythm sound that was a bit off. I wanted a sound that was very drunk. We ran it through a couple delay pedals to give the song this sort of tension. I went to Bristol to record with a co-producer whose name is Ali Chant. And that was the first time I'd been to Bristol.

I didn't know anyone there, and it was a very uncomfortable place, and that's what drew me to it. My main thing whenever I record is I want to make sure that I feel uncomfortable, because if I feel too at ease, then I feel like, you know, ideas just don't come out the way they need to. And so I like the idea of Bristol because I'd never been there. And it seemed very isolated and it seemed like the perfect fit. Once I got to Bristol, Allie and I started talking. And he brought up the idea of adding in real trumpet and real fluegel horn too. He's like, what if we take these sections that you've written on keyboard

and we send him over to a trumpet player and we see how that sounds? I was raised with parents who they pretty much only watched old television shows, Andy Griffith to Little House on the Prairie, to the Honeymooners, to all those kind of shows with songs that were like extremely cheesy. And so, you know, I really wanted the horns to sound like some old television theme song that got stuck in a weird reality. That their body's great. The song starts with everybody wants to think they're not what they ate,

that their body's great. Everybody wants to think that they're good at heart when they're full of hate. That they're good at heart when they're full of hate. You know, I think I just really saw it in myself, being tired of viewing myself as someone that doesn't have nearly as many flaws as I do have. I think the song is called the knower because it's sort of a representation of being out of your own body and being able to look down at yourself and recognize who you truly are. And not like the lies you've been told or the skewed perspective in the way you view yourself, but who you actually are. And now here's The Knower by Youth Lagoon in its entirety.

Goon visit SongExploder.net, where you can find a link to buy this track and watch the music video. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Keis Heir Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs.

And this album is the product of... All of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuckus, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.cash.c.com.

Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. next time on Song Exploder, Natalia Lafourcade, who's been nominated for five Latin Grammys, including Song of the Year for this track. You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and subscribe to all the episodes on iTunes or wherever you download podcasts. You can also find the show at Radiotopia.fm, home of all the shows on the Radiotopia Podcast Network from PRX. Special thanks to Christian Coons for production assistance on this episode. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.