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Mar 5, 2013With 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.
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Mar 20, 2013Overall, Wondrous Bughouse is a beautiful, experimental album that never forgets that above all, music is an art form and is meant to be experience as is film, art, or literature.
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Mar 13, 2013Wondrous Bughouse is a delicious collage: provocative, allusive and consistently engaging.
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Mar 4, 2013Though the songs themselves are wonderful, that's the powerful source Powers taps into here: if you feel like the dark center of the universe or simply need a little space, Wondrous Bughouse obliges.
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Mar 4, 2013Youth Lagoon’s sophomore record stands tall and sure-footed.
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Mar 18, 2013As 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.
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Mar 14, 2013Like the most memorable trips, this one creates some sublime eidetic imagery.
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Mar 7, 2013A few tracks ease into each other too easily and are forgettable, but there’s still an overall sense of growth and fruition.
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Mar 7, 2013Wondrous 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.
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Mar 6, 2013Like Animal Collective, Youth Lagoon craft modernist pop so perfectly of its time that we're hardly aware of how much time has passed.
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Mar 4, 2013He’s growing within himself and outward, emerging with work that’s as mystical and memorable as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
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Mar 18, 2013He’s mulling over cosmic, metaphysical thoughts: about time and space, good and evil, love and death, all in music that certifies every uncertainty.
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Mar 14, 2013The density of its production and the slipperiness of its song structures ensures that this album isn’t for everyone. But for those with a high tolerance for psychedelic whimsy and the time to invest in repeated listens, Wondrous Bughouse offers ample pleasures.
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Mar 7, 2013Powers is going all in on this one, inviting you into his Wondrous Bughouse and daring to pour light into an often dark place.
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Mar 5, 2013While Wondrous Bughouse may not be for everyone, it certainly pushes new barriers.
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Mar 5, 2013The production values mean that, even though Powers' reverent anthems aren't a huge departure from what he's done in the past, the results have added gravitas.
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Mar 4, 2013As one comes to appreciate them through repeated listens, it becomes clear that what initially sounds like a letdown is, from another vantage point, an impressive achievement.
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Mar 4, 2013Wondrous 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.
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Mar 4, 2013Tiptoeing 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.
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Mar 6, 2013Powers affords himself a more experimental stance, lacing warped warbles and sketchy interludes between the seams of his brand of kaleidoscopic builder tracks.
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Mar 4, 2013If The Year of Hibernation was childhood nostalgia, this is existentialist pubescence.
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Q MagazineApr 10, 201310 ready-made, slightly wonky theme tunes. [May 2013, p.113]
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Mar 11, 2013Wondrous 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.
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Mar 4, 2013With 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.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 46 out of 55
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Mixed: 7 out of 55
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Negative: 2 out of 55
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Mar 5, 2013
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Mar 11, 2015
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May 15, 2013