With the culmination of Trevor Powers' Youth Lagoon project coming to an end last year, one of the most surprising things to come out of it may have been Boise guitarist Logan Hyde's solo debut Innocence. Inaugural singles "My Only Friend" and "Bloated" were practically spun from the same gauzy bedroom psych that defined much of Powers career but Hyde's efforts were more than a mere sonic carbon copy. They were reminiscent in a way that two musical compatriots with much in the way of influences and artistic ideas might be; based on similar source material but seeking out and achieving different end results. Recorded in the summer of 2014 (but not actually released until 2015), Hyde's project was much more rooted in the present than Powers' nostalgic reveries. Watermelon, the latest album from Hyde, is essentially further proof that Logan Hyde's worthy of much more than Youth Lagoon comparisons.
Beginning with a shimmering instrumental opener, it's a synthy sepia colored sound bath that informs much of the rest of the album. There's a ton of winning moments on the album but perhaps my favorite lies in stand out "Sleeping Bear". For an album composed mostly of warm tones and soft textures, it's a delightful bit of dream pop inspired revelry. It's constantly shifting - casually trotting around lovely musical moments and employing a vast array of different sounds. For a song called "Sleeping Bear" it doesn't really linger - shuffling from melody to melody; moment to moment, and never really giving much thought to going backwards. Even reoccurring moments aren't quite handled like you'd expect - they appear in new configurations: sung out on a new instrument, under new effects, at a higher musical vantage point. Compositionally, it's positively lush and handled with both meticulous care and reckless abandon. Lyrically, Hyde manages to do a lot with very little. Offered up with the quiet of a children's bedtime story and paced very much like one, Hyde attaches a personal narrative to events that aren't exactly rooted in real life or even reality in general. Even establishing the narrative frame and in story consequences, Hyde doesn't do much in the way of explaining and the song achieves a sort of magical realism quality: the fantastic and unlikely treated very much like normal occurrences. It's a song that relies far more on its various instrumental breaks to carry much of it and it succeeds based predominantly on how much Hyde offers there. There's a wealth of musical moments that could be explored further but Hyde takes only what he needs and keeps the ball moving.
Logan Hyde's sophomore album Watermelon is out now and available for a pay-what-you-want rate at his Bandcamp.
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