Album Review: Land of Talk - Some Are Lakes

Land of Talk
Some Are Lakes
Saddle Creek, 2008

Opening track "Yuppy Flu" sets the album off auspiciously enough with a fantastic bass hook and those glassy guitar bursts that made the EP so immediate and magnetic. The lyrics, like so many others that follow, are ostensibly about some grave matter, including A) death, B) love, C) feminism, or D) some even graver combination thereof. But it's just as well, since lead singer and guitarist Elizabeth Powell manages that irresistible singing-through-her-teeth thing that makes similarly strong headed broads like Fiona Apple and Kim Deal so endearing. It's when the soft ones ("It's Okay," "Troubled") fit too comfortably into the soft-keys-and-lilted-vocals mold that things take a wrong turn at Fleetwood and end up at Lilith Fair. Still adds some much needed muscle and (feminine) grit to that pencil-neck Saddle Creek roster, though.

[Zach Noland]