Jan. 13, 2010 - Issue #743: Broken Embraces

Owen Pallett

Owen Pallett
Owen Pallett {recordings_bands_mg} Owen Pallett {/recordings_bands_mg}
, Owen Pallett

For Owen Pallett's follow-up to his inaugural-Polaris Prize-winning He Poos Clouds (back when he was still called Final Fantasy, since dropped since he's going to start distributing albums in Japan), it's actually better to look to an EP he released in the fall of 2008. Spectrum, 14th Century was a collaboration with Beirut's Zack Condon, organized around the idea—Pallett admits to considering the term "concept album" a bit redundant—that the songs were "field recordings" taken from the fictional isle of Spectrum during a century in which their god, cleverly named Owen, began to grow sick of their rapacious and lustful ways.

Heartland picks up on Spectrum in two important ways. First of all, its organizing idea is that it is the first-person story of Lewis, a Spectrumian (Spectrumese?) farmer who sets out on a quest to meet his god, Owen. Secondly, it continues Spectrum's tendency away from the violin loops of the original Final Fantasy albums for something downright orchestral, an expansive but shrewdly arranged melange of strings, horns, woodwinds, cymbals and snares that's probably the closest pop gets to classical this side of Joanna Newsom.

That's not just idle hyperbole, in this case: Pallett actually recorded the album with the Czech symphony. And while that obviously lets him indulge tics and treats that are just not generally possible on a pop album, it also trades some of Beirut's folky, inviting charm for a more buttoned-up austerity, not necessarily an improvement: underneath his highfalutin ideas, Pallett is a witty songwriter with a dark, dry sense of humour, and where some of his earlier work (especially He Poos Clouds) used the chamberish sounds of the violin to subtly counterpoint that, here the arrangements sometimes get too precious, as if the players are missing the joke.

It's not always the case, though. Album standout "Oh Heartland, Up Yours!," Lewis's blunt critique of Owen's governance, uses subdued woodwinds and a distant knock to set a dry mood, before slowly building towards its eponymous cry, which only serves to make the juxtaposition of lines like "a concatenation of locusts" and "Oh Heartland, up yours!" all the more biting. The lively "Flare Gun" also gets a fair bit of life, occasionally popping off into asides that sound like the Looney Tunes orchestra soundtracking someone falling down the stairs, but more generally just matching Pallett's wit with a sonic equivalent. "The Great Elsewhere" goes in a bit of a different direction, staccato synths and pulsing strings making Lewis' pain palpable, if not downright danceable.

Basically what it boils down to, though, is that Pallett's intellect often gets in the way of feeling a lot in the way of emotion when he's singing: these are usually heady pleasures. Spectrum, 14th Century played against that by incorporating some of Beirut's bittersweetness and light; He Poos Clouds maximized it by incorporating the dry wit into the music. There are touches of both approaches on Heartland, but not enough of either to match up with either of those. There are worse ways to spend an hour, but this still isn't Pallett at the height of his powers. V

Owen pallett
Heartland
(Domino)

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