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Land of Talk - Some Are Lakes CD (with instant MP3 download)
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Quantity in Basket: none
Code: LBJ-126-2
Price:
$11.00
Shipping Weight: 0.15 pounds
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***When you purchase Some Are Lakes, you will get a link instantaneously via email to download the entire album in high quality 320 Kbps!!***
Label: Saddle Creek
Catalog Number: LBJ-126
ALSO AVAILABLE ON LP and DIGITALLY
After more than two years of touring for their debut release, 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.
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. Powell is as unrelenting in her appraisal of the world as she’s ever been,
and it’s a world as pitiably venal as it is lovingly rendered. These songs might easily have sat in
tandem with the urgent rawness of the EP tracks but with Powell’s sense of story and Vernon’s
fresh perspective, they find better use on the new album. Here 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 – a narrative string from there, to here,
and beyond. 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 and love unending as a backhand
ode to the very album it appears on. It’s a statement of intent with a sea change at its heart.
“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. Where once one might have questioned
whether Powell was shielding herself under the gauze and frenzy of her music, songs
like “It’s Okay,” with its Afghan Whigs-inspired soul, and the alt-country amble of “Troubled”
prove that she is ready to strike at the heart of even her own cherished conceits, and
come out of it fresh, fighting fit and game for putting herself on the line in the spirit of true
musical confession.
As a portent of things to come Some Are Lakes is nothing short of inspiring. On its
own merits, it’s simply striking. The simplest things are the hardest to make.
Track List:
1. Yuppy Flu
2. Death By Fire
3. The Man Who Breaks Things (Dark Shuffle)
4. Some Are Lakes (DOWNLOAD)
5. Give Me Back My Heart Attack
6. It’s Okay
7. Young Bridge
8. Corner Phone (DOWNLOAD)
9. Got A Call
10. Troubled
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