Land Of Talk - Life After Youth Vinyl Record

Life After Youth is the first Land of Talk album since 2010's Cloak and Cipher. After taking a few months off after Cloak and Cipher's touring cycle, frontwoman Elizabeth Powell got back to work on a followup. Instead, a series of mishaps - post-tour fatigue, a crashed hard drive with new demos, and her father's stroke in 2013 - turned "a few months" into "a few years." While caring for her father, Elizabeth fell under the spell of classical, ambient, and Japanese tonkori music, whose meditative quality aided his recovery. Immersing herself in those sounds would change her entire approach to music-making; she started writing songs without her trusty guitar, instead building tracks up from synth beds and programmed loops.

Life After Youth's centerpiece track, "Inner Lover," presents the most radical results of those experiments. It's an audio Rorschach test of a song: key in on the incessant synth pulse underpinning Elizabeth's pleading vocal ("take care of me!") and the track assumes an ominous intensity. But when you surrender to the relaxed drum counter-rhythm and subliminal harmonies, "Inner Lover" projects a graceful serenity. Even the songs built atop more traditional rock foundations exist in that liminal space between dreaming and waking life, confidence and doubt, raw feelings and soothing sounds.

1. Yes You Were
2. This Time
3. Loving
4. What Was I Thinking?
5. Spiritual Intimidation
6. Heartcore
7. Inner Lover
8. World Made
9. In Florida
10. Macabre