Participants Biography

It’s late August, and on the porch of her home in Montreal, Elizabeth Powell is using one hand to swat away pestering bumblebees, and holding a telephone to her ear with the other, telling the story of her group, Land Of Talk. “We’ve been away for so long, on the road,” she laughs, a malevolent buzz audible in the background. “I come back, and there’s bees everywhere… Killer bees! It’s awful…”

‘The Road’ has latterly become Powell’s second home, or maybe her first, since Land Of Talk began to enjoy a nuzzling acclaim in Canada; she estimates they’ve played over 300 shows since they formed, criss-crossing the country and enjoying well-received sorties across the border in a rickety van. “I didn’t used to enjoy ‘The Road’, and now I do,” she offers. “You have to relinquish a certain amount of your expectations, about your privacy or your daily routine. It’s hard to feel grounded, when you’re always moving somewhere else. But then you let go of that need to feel grounded; you feel settled, once you forego that need for stability.”

This seems an apt metaphor for Powell’s experience with Land Of Talk. A couple of years ago, Elizabeth was another struggling singer/songwriter on the Montreal circuit, plying her songs with only her guitar to share the lonely spotlight. “I didn’t like it,” she remembers. “I can’t stand playing by myself, it’s a little too obvious, all ‘me me me’.  I was tired of only ever playing with a backing band every now and again, guys who only learned the songs before the set. I wasn’t pushing myself, as a guitarist, or as a songwriter.”

Salvation came in the form of a bassist named Blake, who she began rehearsing with. “The songs started out kind of ‘poppy’,” remembers Elizabeth, “But when I started playing with Blake, they started going in an almost ‘math-rock’ directions, these new arrangements that were actually going somewhere. It all got much heavier.”

Powell recruited a drummer, Bucky Wheaton – “We were friends in college, loved all the same bands – Nirvana, Fugazi, Weezer, and all the Canadian bands of our generation, garage-bands, basement-bands” – and took to the road with her new group, soon drawing audiences spellbound by their barbed and impassioned pop, and by their fierce live performance. “It gets intense up onstage,” admits Powell. “We form the ‘triangle of terror’! I don’t talk to the audience much – unless I’m drunk, and then they just want me to shut up – we all pretty much concentrate upon each other. There’s a lot of unspoken communication; it could seem like the audience is peeking in on a rehearsal or something; it’s very powerful.”

The group (now with a new bassist, Tim K) entered the studio in 2006, to record their debut EP, Applause Cheer Boo Hiss. Money being tight, they had a budget of $1000. Studio time costing $350 a day, they cut the record in just three days; this was not a problem, however, as their punishing touring schedule meant they knew their songs inside-out, capturing each within two or three takes.

The record that resulted from these sessions is a delicious cocktail of the raw and the sweet, brittle buzzsaw guitars chiming tunes heavy with nagging melody and crackling emotion, the bulldozer rhythm section delivering the angst-fused dynamics, a rocket-propelled mess of low-end and clatter. Above this melee, Powell’s vocal, honeyed and broken, recalling Chan Marshall’s warm disquiet, and Juliana Hatfield’s bright clarity. “Some people think our music is really upbeat, others think it’s real sombre. I like to let people take what they want from the music.” The truth is, the songs are both upbeat and sombre, sometimes at the same time, which is why they’re so addictively delicious: heartbreak and hope, set to soaring melody and explosive noise. Perfect rock’n’roll.

As acclaim built for the EP, One Little Indian stepped in and offered to release it in the UK. The group – now numbering Chris McCarron on bass and Eric Thibodeauon drums – was in the studio working on their second album, cutting three new tracks for this release. “Just now, I was trying to write a new song,” says Powell, “And I was thinking, what if I can’t make the new album sound like the first? It was such a random bunch of factors behind that record – we were rushed, we had no budget… And now I’m worried, what if we can’t recapture that spirit, that spontaneity?”

The unforced, thrilling joy of ‘Young Bridge’, with its ecstatic chorus and a vocal performance that would please Debbie Harry, proves Elizabeth shouldn’t worry, that her knack for coruscating, uplifting sunshine’n’stormclouds pop shows no sign of deserting her yet, that bigger things await this cherishable little band from Montreal.

“‘The Road’, rock’n’roll… You have to let go of your expectations, you have to take what you find,” she says. “It’s not for everybody. It’s not for anybody who wants a ‘normal’ life. Which I don’t, anymore.”

Biog as for City Showcase 2008.  Pic taken by James Sellar for City Showcase - one includes Lars Brandle of Billboard