Land Of Talk

Montreal's Land Of Talk debuted with 2006's Applause Cheer Boo Hiss, on which singer-guitarist Elizabeth Powell combined a respectable grasp of pop-punk violence with a powerful sense of mood, using weird, barbed chords and an injured croon to yank plenty of loose threads from her hooks. By the time she recorded 2008's Some Are Lakes, she was understandably a little tired of the trio's initial batch of songs, and made a more quiet and suspenseful album without giving up on Applause's unpretentious strengths. Not long after, Powell suffered from a vocal polyp, and during her recovery, wrote the songs that would become the new Cloak And Cipher, a lush album bolstered by members of Arcade Fire, Stars, and The Besnard Lakes.

Updated 10/07/2010