Land of Talk

About

The artist

Land of Talk is a Montréal indie-rock project built around the writing, voice, guitar playing, and production of Elizabeth Powell. Powell formed the project in Montréal in 2006 after studying music at Concordia University. The seven-song Applause Cheer Boo Hiss introduced Land of Talk that year with a compact mix of angular guitar, rhythmic phrasing, and melodic openness. Some Are Lakes followed in 2008, with Justin Vernon producing and playing guitar, and earned a place on the 2009 Polaris Music Prize Long List. Cloak and Cipher received a second Polaris Long List nomination in 2011. After a multi-year pause, Land of Talk returned with Life After Youth in 2017 and continued with Indistinct Conversations in 2020. Powell wrote its eleven songs and produced and arranged the album with Mark Bucky Wheaton and Christopher McCarron. The four-song Calming Night Partner EP followed in 2021. Performances, released in October 2023, shifted the centre of the project from muscular guitar toward piano, synthesizer, and spacious arrangements. Powell wrote the record during a period of personal and artistic reassessment and handled its production, while engineer Rena Kozak and multi-instrumentalist Laurie Torres helped shape the sessions. The album retained Land of Talk's direct melodic language while opening more room for quiet, improvisation, and memoir. Saddle Creek and One Little Independent reissued the early catalog in July 2024 through the twenty-five-track Applause Cheer Boo Hiss: The Definitive Edition and The EPs compilation. A 2025 collaboration with Julie Doiron, Michael Feuerstack, and Dany Placard, Where The Road Goes From Two Lanes Down To One, is the latest principal release attached to the exact Spotify identity. Land of Talk also appeared at the 2025 Polaris Festival and performed with The Barr Brothers in February 2026. The exact Spotify identity currently contains 28 principal album and single containers in the Canadian market from April 2006 through October 2025: eight provider-classified albums and 20 provider-classified singles. That provider count includes multi-track EPs and the 2024 compilation within Spotify's album and single classifications; MusicList preserves those classifications rather than silently recategorizing the containers. The artist-controlled Bandcamp profile lists Land of Talk in Montréal, Quebec. Current independent presenter records from 2025 and 2026 also describe the project or Powell as Montréal-based. The current official website identifies Saddle Creek as the label, Chromatic as press representation, and Paquin Artists Agency as booking representation. Professional inquiries should begin through that official website; MusicList does not republish the direct email addresses displayed there. The older landoftalk.com domain now hosts unrelated commercial content and is excluded. The current site template also contains stale Barr Brothers DSP links alongside Land of Talk's correct profiles, so MusicList retains only the collision-free Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook identities corroborated across current artist and industry sources. Spotify media is rendered live with provider attribution and a monogram fallback.