Photos: LAND OF TALK to Release Double Single 'Dogs b/w Cats' and Album LASTS

Land of Talk–the Montreal-based project of Lizzie Powell–shared a double single, 'Dogs b/w Cats,' from their forthcoming sixth album, LASTS, out November 13, 2026, via Saddle Creek. With 'Dogs,' Powell tried to write a song that sounds the way listening to The Cure makes them feel. 'I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but was thinking it would lend itself to looking back on loves lost, yearning, regret. What came out was a simmering rage borne from living under the patriarchy,' they say. The result is a menacing groove interwoven with exploratory, carefree guitar lines and a crisp, seething vocal that ties it all together.

Grounded by a grooving, hooky bassline, 'Cats,' meanwhile, is punctuated by keyboard flourishes and playful percussive interjections. 'When I listened back to the finished track,' says Powell, 'I found those parts unintentionally sounded not unlike mischievous cats breaking into our studio after hours and jumping all over the instruments.' The song's lyrics are the result of letting the creative tap flow freely. 'What happened lyrically was almost out of my control,' they explain. 'I don't always know or understand what my songs are about until years later, but I know for certain every song I write is a deeply personal and sacred process and offering.'

Both 'Dogs' and 'Cats' are accompanied by videos directed by Ana-Maria Espino Trudel, and follow lead single '4:44,' a serpentine, summery earworm that saw praise and support from Stereogum ('For the past two decades, Land Of Talk have been one of the underground's most underrated treasures.'), The Needle Drop, The Line of Best Fit, Dork, Exclaim!, Northern Transmissions, and more. Written and produced by Powell, and recorded with trusted collaborators Michael Feuerstack (bass, pedal steel, additional vocals, engineering & mixing) and Michael Belyea (drums, percussion) in a cabin in rural Harrington, Quebec, LASTS is now available for preorder.

Land of Talk is still here–that wasn't always a guarantee. Over the multi-faceted twenty year history of their project, Powell has drifted from and back to music, always interrogating their role as an artist. In the time since 2023's Performances, they found themselves utterly worn down by the vicissitudes of the music industry and wracked with worry around their aging parents. Yet the music didn't stop: Powell heard songs in traffic and in birds chirping, in their downstairs neighbor's daily prayers and in the babble of children on the street. Melodies slowly cohered over time. 'Life can become so unbearable, and music is where I go to metabolize it,' they explain. 'I know the music was the only thing that was going to help me.' Soon Powell reemerged with LASTS.

LASTS is full of double meanings–both resilience and finality, acting as a noun and a verb. Though the album is haunted by crises including climate collapse, political upheaval, and genocide, the magnitude of global turmoil led Powell towards smaller, humane depictions of suffering and grief. As both their parents became ill, Powell reflected on the last time a person might walk, might talk to a loved one. Yet watching their parents near the other side of life's arc also made Powell consider all they had survived across their own decades on this earth, their new songs channeling both gratitude and rage. LASTS became a phrase, honoring Land of Talk's circuitous route and all Powell's reckoned with through the years. 'I think of this record as a love letter to life,' they say.

For Powell, songwriting is a slow process of pulling ideas from the ether–a constant, fluid conversation rather than abrupt flashes of inspiration or any kind of prompt-driven session. Eventually, they collect stray chords and melodies from a trove of voice memos, distilling and often narrowing to a particular instrument–synths on 2017's Life After Youth, acoustic guitar on 2020's Indistinct Conversations, piano on Performances, and now the smaller parlor acoustic for the intimacy of LASTS. These eight songs travel through everything that was on Powell's mind in these years: sexual abuse and grooming in the music industry, the sharp polarity of the beauty they see in their artist peers and the toxicity they see in industry power brokers, the mortality of their parents ('Funeral clothes have been packed a few times,' they say of various close calls), the ongoing process of understanding their identity as a non-binary person. They often forge ahead with the songs in hopes of communing with others who have experienced the same: 'Music is medicine for me, and I know that if this song helps me feel better, maybe someone else will feel heard and understood.'

If there's an end to the journey of LASTS, it's in the willful imperfection of its closing title track. Powell allowed the song to sit, with all its uncalculated breaths and lack of resolution. That, to them, was part of the point–frustration that some things can never be resolved beyond the recognition we're not alone, or that we need to keep moving while carrying everything from our past. 'I have this sense that everything is unraveling, decaying,' Powell concludes. 'These songs are me trying to stay safe, to ride right in the barrel of the wave.' That poignant final image defines LASTS. Drawing upon everything Land of Talk and Powell have been in two decades, the album becomes a document of the simple yet implausible act of survival.