Lizzie Powell has always been a risk-taker. As the creative force behind the influential Canadian outfit Land of Talk, the Montreal-based songwriter has over the past 15 years amassed a catalog of four unimpeachable albums that stretch the boundaries of indie rock. But Performances, their fifth LP, feels like a total reinvention: an unflinching statement from an artist who’s not afraid to say how they feel. Though it trades muscular guitar rock for understated piano, it’s still the most urgent, cathartic, and personal release of Powell’s career so far. “It's the weirdest, mightiest little record I've made since I used to write music on my four-track when I was 14,” says Powell. “I needed to make a love letter to my teenage self by being more vulnerable and doing all the production myself.” Here, they doggedly value their own intuition over anything else to make their most rewarding album yet.

Hua Li’s project has often worked the fruitful tension between opposing forces, whether being mixed-race, bisexual, or overtly political and softly vulnerable. Now the “half-Chinese, half-militant, half-rapper of your heart” is back with ripe fruit falls but not in your mouth, her most ambitious and personal record to date. Playing between hazy R&B, hip-hop, jazz and electronic, Hua Li’s sophomore LP takes the imaginary garden as a proxy for cultivating home. 

Textured and sensual, the Montreal multi hyphenate balances her rich, waveforming tone with danceable, electronic signatures. The rapper is fierce and frequently funny, erupting from gauzy runs to deliver a quick uppercut that stings. With hooky, addictive features by Ambrose Getz and Darkus Millon, ripe fruit is an intimate record of healing. 

Luminous and compelling, Hua Li shows it takes tenderness to let things ripen, and guts to let things die. In-between is a kind of rapture that begs to be savoured.