For some artists the only certainty in their lives is unpredictability. Montreal's Liz Powell has had an unfair share of it, which is why it has taken seven years to follow up her Bon Iver-produced debut, Some Are Lakes.
A series of personal travails (including losing her voice, seeing her demo-hosting laptop irretrievably crash and burn, losing the will to continue as a musician, nursing her father through a heart attack) added to the pressure. Eventually, however, resilience kicked in, and the resultant work has shaped Life After Youth into the most intriguing album of immersive, de-stressed guitar pop-rock you'll hear this summer.
Blending pure melody, dissonant guitar licks and nimble ambient, meditative rhythms, songs such as This Time, What Was I Thinking, Inner Lover and In Florida mark out the album as a shoo-in for end-of-year Best Of lists.
