Elizabeth Powell is back with a new Land of Talk album, Performances, due out on October 13 via Saddle Creek. “It’s the weirdest, mightiest little record I’ve made since I used to write music on my four-track when I was 14,” Powell adds. “I needed to make a love letter to my teenage self by being more vulnerable and doing all the production myself.”
The album is also notable for Powell trading guitar for piano. “I realized right away that I was not feeling electric guitar for this album,” says Powell. “At first, I felt like something was wrong with me: Land of Talk is about guitars and me rocking out. But is that all I am? Can I get away with doing a Land of Talk record without a ton of electric guitar? I would write demos and think, ‘Oh, that doesn’t really kind of sound like Land of Talk,’” they say. “But then I realized that I’m Land of Talk.”
You can hear the new direction on the album’s pretty first single, “Your Beautiful Self.” Powell says, “This was one of the earliest songs I wrote for the record and it came out of the session I did at my friend’s house I rented in Sutton, Quebec. There’s a little bit of Echo and the Bunnymen’s ‘The Killing Moon’ in here. We kept reworking the song in different studios and different contexts but it really clicked when I swapped out guitar for piano. Taking things out and allowing myself to be spare made it work. I wanted to be anti-virtuosic here. Also, my voice goes up the octave on this song in a really fun way. It was a weird and fun personal challenge to get my voice to start out that low.”
Watch the “Your Beautiful Self” video below.
Performances:
1. Intro (high bright high)
2. Your Beautiful Self
3. Fluorescent Blood
4. Marry It
5. Rainbow Protection
6. Clarinet dance jam
7. Sitcom
8. Semi-Precious
9. August 13
10. Pwintiques