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THE LAND OF TALK - Some are Lakes

After more than two years of touring with the likes of The Decemberists, Broken Social Scene and Tapes n Tapes, and having gained and lost a few members, Land of Talk retired to their hometown of Montreal to roll tape on a batch of new songs, resulting in the epic LP, Some Are Lakes.

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Elizabeth Powell set about making an album that could encompass a great deal with very little, an aesthetic in stark contrast to the orchestral pop and digi-tweaked indie chic. With bassist Chris McCarron and drummer Andrew Barr (The Slip), the band set up in an old converted church outside of Montreal and recorded 9 songs with the helping hands of Justin Vernon (Bon Iver). The tenth and final track “Troubled” was recorded in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, at Vernon’s parents’ home.

The album opener, “Yuppy Flu”, and the two songs that follow, “Death By Fire” and “The Man Who Breaks Things (Dark Shuffle)”, are stealthy nods to Land of Talk’s much ballyhooed debut EP Applause Cheer Boo Hiss. With Powell’s sense of story and Vernon’s fresh perspective, they set a perfect bridge from the jangling dissonance and ferocious doubled voicings of the debut, towards the road-weathered clarity and reflectiveness she has now begun to own so fully. When the titular track hits four songs in, it’s clear why “Some Are Lakes” is the album’s anthem call, as much a nostalgic tramp through summers past.

“It started at a summer lake / a sentence and a name / If only for a moment’s sake/ We called it and it came” Powell sings. The fierce spotlight of Powell’s attention points inward and has begun exposing a more private side of the nascent iconoclast. There’s nothing fragile in it. The honesty makes it steel. That in itself is a kind wonder.  As a portent of things to come Some Are Lakes is nothing short of inspiring. The simplest things are the hardest to make.

THE LAND OF TALK - Some are Lakes is available through One Little Indian and distributed by Creative Vibes

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