100: Youth Lagoon - My Beautiful Girl / Lucy Takes A Picture
For reasons I don't need to start pulling apart today, I've been thinking a lot recently about the passing of time and how we mark and sometimes celebrate certain occasions. Births and deaths, chapters new and repeated; small milestones in a big old chunk of life.
Today is one of those, the 100th song we've shared through this three/six/five project. A chapter in a book in a series that has been GoldFlakePaint, this strange little beast of a thing I started quietly one day in the summer of 2010. There will some people reading this who have been since that first year, and there will be others who might have only discovered GFP yesterday, such is its wonderfulness.
Back in 2010, I ran one of the first ever interviews that Youth Lagoon did - maybe the first he ever did. It was a small q&a, done over email, when he had a few demos on a Soundcloud page - still the finest DIY sketches I've ever stumbled upon. Those demos would grow into his incredible debut album, The Year of Hibernation; sounds that wove into the fabric of my own life at the time and still mean so much to me some 13/14 years on.
Trevor, the force behind Youth Lagoon, is currently making the best music of his life. He needed a rest - don't we all - and took a long time away from his craft before returning with Heaven Is A Junkyard in the early throws of last year. That very special record has been followed by a standalone single - Football - and now another two-song 7" release, which is just as absorbing, just as singularly Youth Lagoon, in all its dizzying magic.
The 7" is formed of the winding, beautifully engrossing 'Lucy Takes A Picture', shared a few months ago, which aches with melancholy, glows with intrigue. The release is rounded off with brand new track 'My Beautiful Girl' which was released just yesterday. More skeletal, less audacious, it's a haunting ballad from a dark night you don't want to step out into but can't sleep for its calling.
"There’s a near-ghost town in western Idaho called Idaho City — about 30 minutes from home. I go there often to swim in the river, pray, and be alone in the country. Last time I went, I hiked through the cemetery (known as ‘Boothill’ ‘cuz of all the miners that died with their boots on) and saw a gravestone in darkness and dry weeds that said only, “My Beautiful Girl.” No name. No dates. Just love. Who was this beautiful girl? The portal opened, and I wrote down the message.”
I couldn't think of a better way to ribbon-bow this first section, of this new chapter, of this long-running project that has brought such joy and wonderment to me over the years. So much has changed, the shape and focus of Gold Flake Paint has shifted numerous times, but we're here regardless, sharing songs from our favourite singers, in the hope that it reaches through the blurry mess of the world and lands in your world, if only for a brief moment.
And isn't that just something?
Listen on GFP / Buy the 7" via Bandcamp
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three / six / five is a daily music-sharing project from gold flake paint; read more about the idea here
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