CD reviews

 

For all practical purposes, Land of Talk is Elizabeth Powell. There’s a revolving supporting cast, sure, but the singer / guitarist is primarily why anyone gives a damn about this Montreal trio. It is, after all, her voice—at times smoothly shorn like Sarah McLachlan but with the serrated edges of Chan Marshall or even a relatively sober Courtney Love (minus the pack-a-day huskiness)—that carries the day. She also shares other aesthetic qualities with both Marshall (aka Cat Power) and Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver—and the producer of LoT’s full-length debut, Some Are Lakes) but with less crazy (Marshall) and neo-folk introspection (Vernon).

 

There’s a restrained post-Riot Grrrl tinge to songs like “Sixteen Asterisk” and “A Series of Small Flames,” while the ethereal intro to “May You Never” resembles something off Calico Horse’s Mirror, except this pony can buck with dingy, driven indie rock long after the languid atmospherics have faded.

 

Fun and Laughter—a hybrid release of four new songs coupled with three music videos culled from Some Are Lakes tracks—is ultimately just an appetizer, not the all-you-can-eat Land of Talk buffet. It’s filling, for now, but leaves slight hunger pangs that will linger until the main course arrives.

 

 

 

Self-loathing, homelessness and drug addiction—Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is under the impression that he invented them all. But it’s probably not a good idea to tell him otherwise. The delusion just might be what keeps him going, and for now, it’s going quite well.

 

Having Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone, respectively, produce his first two records couldn’t have hurt. But dollars to doughnuts, Robinson’s combo of fucked-up-ness and talent trumps hipster producers every time. What someone should tell the Brooklyn-squatting, sad-sack crooner, however, is that no one is really going to give a shit what impression he’s under as long as the music stays solid.

 

His sophomore effort, Summer of Fear, is even better than his self-titled debut, and that record was pretty damn fine. And while his textured arrangements are drawing comparisons with Arcade Fire, it’s all about the man himself. For all the stunners on Fear, if you took the vocal track off “The Sound,” it could pass for the shaking hands scene in an ’80s after-school special about bullying. The fact that MBAR’s presence can save a track like that speaks volumes to how dynamic the 26-year-old really is.

 

 

Emerging last year from an insular world of eerie tape loops, classic-rock radio and crusty blues and bluegrass records, Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile dropped Constant Hitmaker. It was one of the year’s biggest surprises, a subdued album of effects-heavy sketches for steel guitar and home-recorded weirdness. Followed by the equally excellent—but highly limited—God is Saying This to You earlier this year, it wouldn’t be a surprise to find Vile with little creative coal left to fuel the fire.

 

But from the moment “Hunchback” jumps out of the speakers like Wire’s two-chord lurch “Lowdown” given an extended makeover by Crazy Horse, Vile’s running on all cylinders, rambling cautionary lines like, “To get on top these days / You gotta be a low-life drifter / So slither up just like a snake upon a spiral staircase.”

 

Subverting the universality of FM rock staples like Springsteen, Petty and Seger into something altogether darker, Vile positions himself as an outsider who’s observant enough to decry the failings of modern society. Not to say this is an explicitly political record, but it sounds like a heartbroken testament to the damaged American psyche, a place where brotherly love has been supplanted by deception.

 

When Vile claims that “There’s people out there who tell you lies / They get off on givin’ wrong directions / Well, fabrication’s my best friend / But I ain’t never been so insulted in my whole life” on the static-heavy chug of “Freak Train,” it’s clearly a locomotive many of us should jump aboard immediately.