Review Summary: staring down a bottle of wine after thirty isn’t a towel to throw in.
”hey, how’ve you been¿ i know it’s been some time. and i’m sorry for that. i’ve been gone! off! and about, isolated, and cased in dry gin perhaps; i won’t ever leave you hanging in the wind though. you’re what made me who i am. you’re the dickheads i’m all about. broken chords like me can sing too, just a tad more harmless in touch; i’m not a provider though, i’m a contender. i’ll always be here, even when the lights are out and nobody else will be there.”
The preconception of that taking a significant amount of time off when their career isn’t already necessarily cemented is going to kill the artist and their art is absolutely fucking mindless. The other simultaneous preconception of art being a young one’s game is also quite blatantly moronic in tone. Leonard Cohen, also of Montreal, put out arguably his best record at the age of 82, and 16 or so days before his death. Sure
Life After Youth and
You Want It Darker are quite different in technicality, production, and — well, quite frankly not much else, it goes to show that maybe the masses aren’t always right. With Elizabeth Powell’s time off, she took the time to make a record for herself and not really much else and that’s what’s so lovingly presented here.
Life After Youth is a painlessly honest introspection on growing older, and taking a look around at the naysayers with their wine glasses and Bukowski books, and gracelessly moving past them without acknowledgement.
Elizabeth Powell also had quite a lot of time on her hands, isolating herself to an extent after her father had a stroke, and she took time off to care for him. While this caretaking wasn’t particularly acknowledged directly too much on this record, the resulting maturity and time away definitely is. The production is more triumphant, the songwriting is self-assured and not concerned with being more or less than what it is, and the music is more constent than ever. Intro track “Yes You Were” starts with the incredibly anxious power-couple of Elizabeth and her guitar, and is then met by electronic-acoustic drums that ignite the record. While the record may sonically slow down at parts — in fact with the next track it immediately does — the album in tone, and especially in harboring love, is never stopped nor never stopping.
There’s certain tracks that lyrically bleed so much experience and sagacity, yet the blood never trickles down in front of you. It’s such an intelligent and beautifully crafted stance on living that has a forefront of impeccable production to disguise itself as mayhaps a really well crafted reworking of Beach House’s
Bloom. But the moderately discomforting thing about those intentions is that disguising is self-contradictory to the lyrical tone presented on this record. Maybe that
was intentional and this is all even more intricate than I could even begin to conceive or perhaps I’m just overthinking. But with how so well crafted and seamless everything floats on together, it would make perfect sense for this to all be a firmamental doppelganger record in disguise, dreamy production, clever songwriting, and all.
Take into account the crunchy lead guitar that seeps into the end of “Loving” or the drum machine that builds the lofi meditation that is “What Was I Thinking?” and how calculated every single aspect of this record is. This near-haunting conclusion is only bluntly (yet somehow subtly) affirmed by the lyrical prowess showcased on tracks like “Spiritual Intimidation” or “This Time” with lines like
”come in here with a look in your eyes. no that’s fine, you warm me up. we talk of old times! and you don’t know, you have no idea what’s going on in this sick sick sick imagination.” and the gracefully life affirming lyric
”i don’t wanna waste it this time. and see fate as the end of me. i don’t wanna waste it my life. and know that it was all in front of me”. The varied production that keeps everything interesting enough to captivate the listener with cuts like the near Turnover influenced dream-pop-punk track “Heartcore” or the following spiritual introspection that is “Inner Lover” with its quietly creeping electronics taking hold as you slip into what feels like a drug coma for the rest of the record, as it all treads past you in a playfully brisk manner that leaves you almost thinking too much.
Life After Youth is a meditation on artistic independence and maturity in the overrated western world. Elizabeth Powell is essentially making her mission statement that it’s time for her to live her life, and she’s going to do that how she sees fit, regardless of her father, of her bandmates, the critics, or the fans. She does this in such an intrinsically complex manner that celebrates growing up and coming to terms with not being concerned enough to care about anyone other than her and who matters to her. There is love to be given but the younger generation can’t seem to harbor it and that’s what’s at hold on this record. The production is so uniquely presented with perfect variation in the quite contradictingly timid electronics or the anxious guitars that seem to reek of this essentially gorgeous teenage movie soundtrack. It disguises itself as a one dimensional dream pop record that took too much of a liking to Beach House in college, but once you look in between all the tightly inserted lines, you’ll find so much more of what you wanted than what you needed. Land of Talk take the college demographic and indirectly tell it to go fuck itself with the unforeseen and subtly put affirmation that is
Life After Youth.
