Land of Talk at Johnny Brenda's 8PM - Doors 9PM - Show 10PM - Land of
Talk LAND OF TALK An Essay on Indistinct Conversations by author
Heather O’Neill Many of the songs in Indistinct Conversations are
framed by snippets of background noises. The songs begin with
recordings of overheard conversations and phone messages. And then
Lizzie begins to sing. It is as though she is in the room and we are
hearing her inner monologue. It is a voice-over that has nothing at
all to do with what is going on around her. We are just in the mind of
a quiet genius day dreaming. The voice is so sweet and vulnerable.
There is a nostalgia to the songs, that harkens back to a 1990s
melancholia that captured the broken heart of the twentieth century,
like that found in the songs Mazzy Star and Elliott Smith. But is
reminiscent also of the continued struggle of people searching for
power and voice when they find themselves forced into the shadows of
the inarticulate. It reminds one of an orphaned hero in a novel, lost
and absolutely vulnerable, or a chorus girl writing her pensées about
bad relationships on a train. Indistinct Conversation is an album
about a person trying to communicate with lovers and potential lovers
who cannot hear them or give them the love they want back. It
illustrates the ferocious capacity for love that an introspective and
profound person can have and how that can go unreciprocated in the
world. It captures how even the best of us are handicapped by love:
you throw away your umbrella in a rain storm, or your paddles off the
side of the boat, and then ask yourself, why in the world did I do
that? The strength of vulnerability is exhibited in the juxtaposition
between Lizzie’s voice and the masterful, loud, forceful manner in
which she plays guitar, along with the calculated cacophony that is
The Land of Talk sound. Land of Talk is made up of Lizzie Powell on
vocals, guitars and keys, Mark “Bucky” Wheaton on drums and keys,
and Christopher McCarron on bass. All the songs were written by Lizzie
and produced and arranged by the trio. Christopher McCarron went and
built a studio in the basement of Bucky’s Park Extension apartment
in Montreal specially to record and engineer the unique humble appeal
of this album. The longing in Lizzie’s voice rises above the raw
power of Land of Talk’s instrumentation, not because of its muscular
strength, but because of its sweet honesty. The album relates the
devastating effect of emotional vulnerability. It’s as though,
instead of jumping, Anna Karenina decided to sing by the train tracks.
Not even the velocity and noise of the train tracks and the modern
world can silence her passions. The last song is just the sound of
snatches of overheard conversation against a melody, during which the
singer has nothing left to say. Her mind has gone quiet and she is no
longer allowing us in. We are left with a memory of someone in a room.
Someone we refused to love back and who now becomes the one who got
away.
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30/05/2020 Last update