Guelph’s Liz Powell gains a new lease on musical life
LAND OF TALK “LIFE AFTER YOUTH” (DINE ALONE)
Guelph native Liz Powell is back. She’s sounded older and wiser ever since she was a 16-year-old local student wowing audiences with her maturity and depth of songwriting; no one was the least bit surprised as she started wowing audiences across the continent when she formed Land of Talk in Montreal 10 years later. Much acclaim followed, as well as a brief stint in Broken Social Scene in 2009 before she shredded her vocal cords later that year. One more Land of Talk album followed, and then Liz Powell disappeared from the public eye.
The decision to return could not have been made lightly. Land of Talk was surely never lucrative enough to suggest that a return was inevitable. Yet someone with Powell’s voice and talents was not going to stay silent for long. “I don’t want to waste it this time,” she sings. “I don’t want to waste my life.”
“Life After Youth” lives up to its title: Powell’s vocals have a reserve and a measured calm about them, while her guitars swell with quiet storms underneath. She’s always been a sonic child of the ’90s, and here the steady pulse of her rhythm section (featuring, at times, members of Sonic Youth, Roxy Music and Besnard Lakes) and swirling keyboards owe more to hypnotic dreampop à la Yo La Tengo’s swoonier side than the scrappy guitar rock of previous Land of Talk records. Between this new approach and the fact the songs no doubt had plenty of time to simmer; the end result is a record is in every way a new lease for Liz Powell’s musical life. It sounds like the album she’s been trying to make since day one, the one we all knew back then she eventually would.
Stream: “This Time,” “Heartcore,” “World Made”
COMO MAMAS “MOVE UPSTAIRS” (DAPTONE)
Three senior sisters from Como, Mississippi, population 1,000, had never been to New York City before the folks at Daptone Records (Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley) invited them up for a show at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem in 2015. The gospel singers brought the house down. Days later, they shacked up in Daptone’s tiny studio to cut their first album with a full band behind them, Daptone players who know how to hang back and let the soulful grooves speak for themselves, and step aside for the singers.
There’s nothing about “Move Upstairs” that sounds like it was recorded in 2017: but that’s the point. If old-timey African-American gospel music is remotely interesting to you, you could buy an old reissue or you could hear living proof that the tradition is still alive and well.
Interestingly, the Como Mamas have been supported by a non-profit called the Music Maker Relief Foundation, which “was founded to preserve the musical traditions of the South by directly supporting the musicians who make it, ensuring their voices will not be silenced by poverty and time.” His Word is alive. So are these fine ladies. Lend them your ear.
Stream: “Out of the Wilderness,” “I Can’t Thank Him Enough,” “Glory Glory Hallelujah”
BIG WALNUTS YONDER “BIG WALNUTS YONDER” (SARGENT HOUSE)
I realize I’m one of the few who think that the relatively obscure California band Deerhoof were the greatest rock band of the 2000s: for their originality, inventiveness, prolific nature, the fact they didn’t sound like they belonged in any earlier decade, and the presence of drummer Greg Saunier. They’re still going, of course: they’re headlining the Camp Wavelength and Arboretum Festivals this August in Toronto and Ottawa, respectively.
If the name Deerhoof doesn’t mean anything to you, maybe the name Mike Watt does — the monster bass player behind the Minutemen, Firehouse and, in the last decade, Iggy Pop and the Stooges. No? How about Nels Cline, guitarist in Wilco and avant-garde shredder extraordinaire in his own right (check out 2016’s gorgeous and subdued album “Lovers”)?
Those three powerhouses have joined with someone new to my ears, guitarist/ vocalist Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos, to spontaneously combust as Big Walnuts Yonder. Watt sent everyone in the band some bass lines, and everything was written and recorded during three days in a Brooklyn studio, except vocals, which were an afterthought months later.
The result is: insane, in the best possible way. None of these players hold back; the creative synergy and resultant fireworks are clearly evident. And yet all that musical fury is consistently harnessed in the same direction; these are actual songs, not showcases for showboaters. The end result will lay waste to all other guitar-based music you’re likely to hear this year.
Stream: “All Against All,” “Raise the Drawbridges?” “Forgot to Brush”