More effort required but a promising debut.
It's always interesting when a band aims to be something but you actually hear something different. Reading the press release for "Applaud Cheer Boo Hiss" revealed that Land Of Talk's lineage came in the form of jazz rock and jazz fusion. It explicitly says that singer Elizabeth Powell plays the violin. So it comes as something of a surprise when hearing this, the band's debut, that there is no evidence whatsoever of these musical disciplines. What we have instead is a decent, if a little generic, milieu of Canadian indie.
"Applause Cheer Boo Hiss" is undoubtedly a good record and should be listened to by anyone with a penchant for PJ Harvey. The dense soundscapes achieved through distortion and feedback are powerful, the melodies of the singing stick in your head and the overall production is great. What holds Land Of Talk back however is the feeling that they are not wholly comfortable with the music that they are making. One gets the impression in several of their songs that they were destined to be better, but have somehow been held back. Even worse, in the case of "Magnetic Hill" and especially "Street Wheels" the song seems to work its way up to something truly exciting and memorable but fails to deliver.
This is a good album, and one that will win over its audience well. But Land Of Talk are a band that need to harness their collective talents a little better and put them down to produce something that stands out more. The band have surely got the chops to become a tour de force in the same vein as Regina Spektor, but, for the moment, they are stuck in a mould. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, surely, "Applaud Cheer Boo Hiss" could and should have been better.