Fresh out of the studio, Montreal’s sweethearts are back on the road.
Written by Zack MacRae
Elizabeth Powell doesn’t work an industrial job from 9-5. She doesn’t operate heavy machinery in a scrap yard, and doesn’t risk injury at the top of a ladder on a construction site.
Powell works full-time fronting one of Montreal’s most talked about grunge-pop bands, Land of Talk. The three piece are admired for their distorted, pared down sound that is complimented by sometimes subdued and sometimes frantic vocal flourishes from Powell. When a workplace injury stopped her from singing, she was forced to take a step back and refine her style.
“The last song I sung was ‘Speak to me Bones’ and it’s totally just a vocal shredder,” recalled Powell about a show a little over a year ago. “I remember that I could almost feel the blood in my throat at the end of that show.”
The prognosis was vocal misuse, affecting her vocal chords to the point that she couldn’t speak.
“It was just from singing way too much, my vocal chords were just burnt out,” said Powell.
Land of Talk had just finished up a tour with Toronto indie landmark, Broken Social Scene, where Powell was taking on double duty: first opening with her band, then singing the female vocal parts for BSS. The strain and the hours were just too much for her vocal chords, and the band ended up taking a break for the summer of 2009. The temporary hiatus gave the young band some time to rest and gain a little perspective on their situation. In fact, Powell cites her injury as being one of the best things that ever happened to Land of Talk.
“As a young band starting out,” explained Powell, “everybody tells you that you have to do everything right away, that you have to tour the world and that you can’t say no to anything.”
“You stop enjoying the music after a while if you’re not healthy and if you feel like what you are doing is hurting you,” said Powell, reflecting on the recent past.
But when the going got tough, Land of Talk got going. The trio met expectations with their critically acclaimed first album Some Are Lakes, while releasing several EPs including this year’s softly released Fun and Laughter EP. All this while touring relentlessly around North America and Europe.
Now, with a new approach and a more comfortable position, Land of Talk took a seat in the studio to record a new album. Along with drummer Andrew Barr and bassist Joe Yarmush, Powell, who cites Guelph as “where I came into my own, musically speaking,” is just putting the finishing touches on ten songs that are set to come out on August 25.
Spending her formative teenage years as part of the Guelph basement rock scene, Powell sees her musical roots being firmly planting in the Royal City.
“I think Guelph is probably the reason why I’m doing music the way that I do,” she said.
Powell excitedly describes the sound of the new album: “Its got everything in there. It’s punk rock, bluegrass, and there’s some stuff in there that I don’t even know what to call it.”
For their sophomore release, the band took a new direction that ended up producing something that Powell explains is totally different for Land of Talk: a studio album.
“For Some Are Lakes, we were on the road so much playing as a live unit, that when we got into the studio we played on our strengths, which was our chemistry and playing live off the floor,” said Powell.
While recording, because of the hiatus and Yarmush and Barr’s involvement in other projects, the band hadn’t been touring as much, and Powell found herself in Montreal sitting still, for once. This gave her the opportunity to become more acquainted with her old friend: the studio.
“This time around, the approach was just to have fun with the studio and use the studio as our fourth member and see what happens, and so far so good,” said Powell.
The new album sees Powell teaming up with several guest collaborators, including Jeremy Gara from Arcade Fire and Loel Campbell from Wintersleep to bring out a new dimension in their sharp edged, 90s influenced sound.
Experimentation in the studio is new ground for this band of three that pride themselves on how much noise they make together on stage. Adding more elaborate tracks in the studio like horn parts, and also sampling, meant that Land of Talk would have to add a fourth member to their live show, an evolution that at first Powell was hesitant toward.
“We had kind of been protecting the holy trinity or the triangle of terror for so long,” laughed Powell. “But now the three piece will probably become four … I guess the puritan in me kind of thought, if you can’t do it with drums, bass and guitar then you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Their fourth member, who will appear in four or five songs every night, is the band’s old friend and merch guy Michael Felber.
To get out and play songs from the Fun and Laughter EP and the new album, Land of Talk will be touring parts of the US and Canada, starting in Guelph on April 6 at eBar with Adam and the Amethysts.
“Guelph will get the first live debut of a song from the new album,” said Powell, who sounded excited to get out of Montreal and back out on the road, this time a little more humble and a lot healthier.
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