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Singer/guitarist Liz Powell is eager to talk for a number of reasons, including the fact she's joined a well-established rock band as well as having her own group Land Of Talk receiving critical acclaim.
But perhaps the reason she's so talkative is because in a couple of weeks she won't be able to for some time.
"I'll have surgery in early February on my vocal chords," Powell says from her Montreal home. "I have a hemorrhagic polyp and they're going to try and cauterize it. I'll have to rest my vocal chords for at least two months. It won't be the land of talk for me. It will be the land of silence."
Land Of Talk, performing Thursday night at El Mocambo, was spinning its wheels for a little while with a revolving door of drummers and bass players. But the new lineup made touring behind its new studio album, Some Are Lakes, much smoother.
Powell says the decision to re-record material with the new lineup gave the songs "a truer representation of the band as it was."
"I'm glad we did," she says. "We got two new songs out of it and I'm way more in love with the takes that everybody else has heard than the initial set."
Of the 10 tracks which make up Some Are Lakes, Powell has a soft spot for the title track which pays tribute to her parents and their four-decade relationship.
"It was the first time I took myself outside of myself and wrote about a relationship and romance that I've revered, it's in my blood and I look up to them," she says. "I wrote it from my father's perspective as him writing a love letter 40 years later to my mother. I think that's the closest I've ever come to understanding them and highlighting what a beautiful thing they have."
One marriage Powell is especially happy about is her becoming a member of Broken Social Scene after Land Of Talk opened for them last year.
"It was a long time in the making because we've been friends from afar," Powell says. "I have some friends in the band whose solo projects I've recorded on, like Brendan Canning. So it was just a matter of time before we made the marriage."
The actual inclusion however came following some crossed wires between Canning and Powell.
"I emailed Brendan to thank him for asking me to work with him on The Tracey Fragments (film score) and his solo project," she says. "I said if you're touring in the fall my band is releasing an album around that time and I would love to jump on one of your tours and we could open for you.
"Somehow that got misconstrued into me asking him to join their band, which they obliged, so I'm not going to fret about the miscommunication. It was to my benefit so it was great."
Powell also says juggling work with both Land Of Talk and Broken Social Scene won't be difficult as the latter won't be touring until at least later this year after writing and recording a new studio album.
She also finds it difficult determining whether or not Land Of Talk is growing in popularity, partly because she avoids reading any of the band's press.
But there are some clues indicating Land Of Talk are going in the right direction.
"You get a sense just from different offers and different things in the industry, you feel this has definitely been a departure from the first EP in a lot of ways, and there seems to be a bit more of a response," she says. "When Starbucks calls you is when you've done something slightly more commercial."
Singer celebrates her Cartoon Gene
Land Of Talk singer Liz Powell says she has a hard time knowing when a record is going in the right direction.
"I tend to have an extreme delay pedal on my brain," she says. "It's almost impossible for me in the moment or even in the days afterwards to figure out what my handle is on things. So there's a certain amount -- and maybe this is to my credit -- of just blind faith in everything."
Unfortunately, due to her upcoming surgery, Powell says the next few months she will be recording new music and working on new material. She is also planning to write a new song for an animated children's series called Cartoon Gene.
Powell says the song she's written for the series is a power-pop number along the lines of Boss Of Me, the Malcolm In the Middle theme song by They Might Be Giants. But she says the energy of the song is offset by her current whispered lyrics.
"The bittersweet part of it is that I'm back in Montreal for the first time for an extended period in three years," she says. "It's so frustrating that I can't sing. I might try and get away, find somewhere cheap that I can go, maybe somewhere hot."