The idiosyncratic Idaho songwriter and producer Trevor Powers’s latest LP is a vividly cinematic, darkly humorous, dream-like release inspired by a 2023 discovery of VHS home movies documenting his childhood, and lying boxed in the basement of his parents’ house. Interspersed with parental voices and child’s chatter and laughter, it’s lavishly and intimately created songcraft, and with his distinctive, ghostly, croakily tender singing voice, it’s a warm, tender, inventive piece of work, filled with stories and strong images, accompanied also by some of that footage as accompanying videos, transferred to digital format, appealingly grainy and slighly pixelated. The overall picture is looking back a young Powers who has no clue of his future self, but also sketches a series of other charaters, such as a Texas waitress who “wears her apron backwards every time”, a pole dancer who “would fuck the preacher if he only paid enough”, or a man with a gun and a Playboy magazine who is elevated as a vigilante, “Hail the king of the parking lot … While you’re shopping to steal he will circle the block.” There are many strange rather beautiful songs to explore here, from the pumping post-punk joyride of Speed Freak to Football, Gumshoe (Dracula from Arkansas), Lucy Takes A Picture or My Beautiful Girl, while the album is rounded off with audio clippings of Home Movies (1989-1993). As Power puts it: “The more I rewind the tapes of my life, the more I can hear the voice of my soul,” Powers says: “This isn’t nostalgia. Life’s much more messy than that. It’s a dedication to all the parts of who I was, who I am, and who I’m going to be.” Out on Fat Possum Records.
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