After losing her voice, Land of Talk's Elizabeth Powell learns to sing again

Any band that begins at the garage level and proceeds toward bigger, more lasting things will arrive at a defining moment—most likely a whole slew of them—and have to adjust accordingly. For Land of Talk's Elizabeth Powell, one of those came late last year. Her Canadian indie-rock trio (rounded out by bassist Joe Yarmush and drummer Andrew Barr) was opening a string of dates for Broken Social Scene, and she was also handling all the female vocal parts for the headliner—parts that Feist and others had sung in the past.

"I would do Land of Talk, run back to the merch table, do merch," she says. "And when the house music is on between bands, it's very loud. So you're yelling over the merch table. By the time I'm up for Broken Social Scene, it's like I'm already hoarse. So it was triple-duty."

Powell's instinctive singing style consists of draping willowy vocal phrases over busy, kinetic guitar rock. (She may sing dreamily, but she professes a deep love of Fugazi.) With Land of Talk, she'd always had to fight to be heard onstage. "And imagine Broken Social Scene with three guitars, way louder than ours ever are, and the drums and the monitors not really being suited for my voice, because I would always just sing kind of intermittently," she says. "So there was no specific monitor for me. So I could never hear my voice. I was screaming every night and singing other women's vocals."

And the end result? "I completely just devastated my vocal chords—like, gone. So I almost had to get surgery."

Needless to say, that was the end of Powell's singing for a while—talking, too. But it was the beginning of her efforts to harmonize a seat-of-the-pants mindset with a more strategic approach to performing. Proper vocal technique was not something she'd picked up in the "anti-folk basement rock" scene in Montreal that she remembers fondly. Nor was it what she listened for on the Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth and Sebadoh mixtapes her friends passed around.

But with her voice flat-out not working, she wanted to figure out why—and how she could keep it from happening again. "I did learn how to sing and relax," Powell says, "just have a way more quiet upper body, and I was really into my rehabilitative vocal coach and my speech therapist. I had an Alexander Techniques coach for a while. They all really highlighted the idea of 'really, really don't keep tension anywhere, even for dramatic effect.'"

The training had a strangely freeing effect on her: "I think that I've really taken a 180 in terms of vocal stuff. And now I sing with in-ear monitors. I feel like I can kind of slink around onstage a bit more and get into it. I can actually be more grounded and actually move to the beat instead of trying to put all my focus on the upper half of my body and wrenching my voice."

You get the sense that she considers this both a good thing and a slightly embarrassing luxury: "Last night we were faced with the possibility of not being able to use the in-ears, because we didn't have a proper adaptor. And I almost had a panic attack. Now I've almost turned into a softy."

There's proof of change on Land of Talk's digital EP, Fun and Laughter, released on Saddle Creek in October. In videos included for "The Man Who Breaks Things (Dark Shuffle)" and "Some Are Lakes"—songs from the band's 2008 album—Powell looks very cool and relaxed as she sings, even if she is just acting for effect. The strongest evidence, though, is the quality of her voice. During "May You Never," an affecting pop number that pairs an uneasy melody with springy, serrated energy—just the sort of juxtaposition that makes their music interesting—she's drenched in reverb at first, then, once the tempo picks up, she's right there next to your ear.

"I was a little bit more open to taking a little bit more risks, I guess—not like putting reverb on your voice is a risk," she says. "But for me it was just...I'm kind of used to doubling my voice all the time to mask any imperfections.

"I'm also kind of ready to bring the voice more up to the front. Yeah, just have the voice be a little bit more clear, even in terms of enunciating and pronouncing. I'm not as terrified of having people understand what I'm saying. I'm even printing lyrics now...I guess I'm just kind of coming out of my shell."

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