Land of Talk - Life After Youth

Pitchfork 70

There was a moment shortly after Montreal’s Land of Talk released their last album, 2010’s Cloak and Cipher, when the band’s longevity seemed quietly clear. As the Canadian indie pop boom hit its zenith and receded, something about Land of Talk sounded timeless. Never as bombastic as Arcade Fire or as saccharine as Stars, Land of Talk were more straightforward. Even with Cipher pulling guests from the who’s who of Montreal indie, and Justin Vernon producer credits on 2008’s Some Are Lakes, Land of Talk always managed to sound like a direct line to Elizabeth Powell’s consciousness, like the best-kept-secret of your local basement scene. Seven years later, Powell is back with Life After Youth—a solid, consistent return that sounds like the band never left.

Music, or at least a music career, is often said to be a young person’s game—an economy that relies heavily on a college demographic, touring schedules that take their toll on the mind and body, and a lack of economic stability. This all accumulated for Powell. And after a devastating computer crash destroyed the bulk of her post-Cipher material, her father suffered a stroke, leading Powell to put music on pause and prioritize being his caretaker. Life After Youth, then, could also be called Music After the Grind—Powell coming back to music as a healing and sustaining practice, for both herself and her father. “This Time” has Powell announcing her return: “I don’t want to waste it this time/And see fate as the end of me.”

In true Land of Talk form, that’s about as overt as Powell gets. Snapshots of longing manifest throughout the album: “Yes you were on my mind/Done a lot of distance/I can’t leave you behind,” Powell sings on “Yes You Were;” “The wind undoes me/Pulls me past/The way you hold me/Brings me back,” goes the tender “Inner Lover.” Otherwise, the lyrics stay poetically opaque, generating meaning in how phrases sit together, like how the emotional crux of “Inner Lover” rests in the refrain “You light it slowly/Your light is lonely.”

One of Powell’s biggest songwriting strengths has been its unpredictability. As soon as you think you know where a song is going, it turns and drops you into fresh emotional territory; the fragments part and leave you on a plaintive, gutting line. (This approach is currently best practiced by Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan.) Life After Youth uses some conventional song structures, but it contains choice breakaways. “World Made” interjects stops and starts into an otherwise steadily chugging tempo; “Yes You Were” hits the gas pedal with a visceral restlessness. “Spiritual Intimidation” starts mellow, accelerates on an early bridge and drives right off, catching air in a freefall of whirling synths.

For the most part, though, Life After Youth feels like Land of Talk’s most muted release, built from synth parts and programmed loops rather than guitar. Drums are sparse, even on the louder rock songs, and the production never lets the raw parts land quite right. There’s a brashness that’s missing, replaced with the tenderness that comes with gingerly stepping back into something wounded. Late-2000s Canadian indie pop was never one to throw the brick (except maybe for Metric), but Land of Talk always had something of an uprising within it, smuggling in jabs at the music industry and gender.

Youth is instead concerned with an inwardness, peppered with reassurances that could be directed to Powell’s longing fans, the people in her care, or Powell herself. On the gentle closer “Macabre,” she launches into a singsong verse: “If it wasn’t for this life I would leave it/But oh I’d miss the sky and the sea.” As the old cliches would have it, we’re always the oldest we’ve ever been—but there is in fact life after youth, so long as you make a little space for healing.