Fresh breath of hubris
Brendan Murphy
|
In a battle between an ultra-violent farmer named Lewis and a suicidal space alien named Ziggy, who would win?
photo: Ryan Pfluger
|
Former Final Fantasy mastermind Owen Pallett assumes god-like status for new concept album, Heartland
When reached at home in Toronto, Owen Pallett is man enough to admit what the phone call was interrupting. "I was reading about myself on the Internet," Pallett says with a slightly wicked laugh. "I used to be very active, posting on message boards all the time, and it's been really weird for me to stop doing it. Now that people know me as an artist, in my mind it has a different sort of significance. But that doesn't stop all these witty rebuttals from coming to my mind every time I see that 'add comment' button."
Pallett, who shed his Final Fantasy moniker for the release of his latest album, Heartland, is dead set against going the anonymous route.
"I refuse. I know too many musicians who do. I've seen too much sock-puppeting and I'm not interested."
Why is this relevant to a discussion about one of this year's most complex releases? Because, in many ways, the reception of an album that shoots for something a little loftier than a couple of good singles is as interesting as the music itself.
"In Canada, everyone has been really positive. In the States, typically people are applauding the production end of it, and in the U.K. people don't like my singing. The thing that's been really nice is that, in Germany and France, places where I've never really done all that well on the press side of things, they said very positive things about the whole aesthetic of this project."
Heartland is an album that comes with intellectual baggage - not the kind that need weigh you down,
but the kind that contains the supplies necessary to help support the trip ahead. It tells the story of an ultra-violent farmer named Lewis and his dealings with a god-like narrator named Owen. Pallett, honestly but no doubt wisely, is the first to express a little incredulity. "It's meant to be a little 'You've got to be kidding me.' It's really meant to be something too garish for you to want to go to bat for."
Perhaps, but that he's willing to simultaneously admit to and embrace the hubris does make me want to go to bat for him. It's clear that the intellectual legwork involved in this album extends to more than just its recording.
"I was talking to Maggie MacDonald [Hidden Cameras, Barcelona Pavilion, Republic Of Safety] about the album and basically annotated the whole record for her and said, 'Okay, how much of this should I include in the press release?'" recounts Pallett. "Because I don't really want everyone to have the annotated information; I don't think it's going to help people listen to it. But I felt like I wanted to say something and I was just hoping that it was not too much information [that would] scare anyone away."
In the end, the press release was short and to the point, starting with the simple "Heartland exists." Pallett, though, seemed to then double back on his own concerns when he brings up one of modern music's most cherished concept albums.
"But when you get right down to it, what about Ziggy Stardust? It's a post-apocalyptic space opera about, you know, an alien rock star that comes down and faces the world and at the end may or may not kill himself?" says Pallett. "I don't think my record is better than his but, personally, I think my concept is. But I've tried to make the concept and the record exist simultaneously without stepping on each other's toes."
This is perhaps the most important takeaway for those yet to listen to the album: Understanding the album's concept is not necessary for enjoying it. It is densely packed with moments, ones of whimsy, of grandeur and of beauty.
His violin - played, then looped, then played again over the loops - is Heartland's true narrator, pulling the story along and always building on itself. Pallett's clear choral voice is as capable of quietly staying in the background as it is stepping out in front and soaring. His mastery of orchestral and electronic arrangements, already clear on his 2006 Polaris Music Prize-winning release, He Poos Clouds, is evident in his collaboration with the Czech Symphony, which is deftly written into the proceedings, instead of, as is often the case of orchestral crossovers into pop, propped up as window dressing.
But how all this comes together is something best understood by seeing his live show. And though Pallett has added guitarist and percussionist Thomas Gill to the mix, he is the show. Because whether speaking for the fictional Owen or the one who sometimes reads about himself on the Internet, he does so honestly and with a breath of refreshing hubris.
Owen Pallett
w/ Diamond Rings
At Black Sheep Inn, Feb. 18 & 19
