Owen Pallett
So Hutch has been trying to sell us on this Final Fantasy guy for a pretty long time now.
I was mostly ignoring him for whatever reason. I decided to finally take the plunge on his latest, Heartland, though, and it’s fucking beautiful. My not so well articulated comparison is as follows – Danny Elfman meets Loony Tunes meets Sufjan Stevens.
I’m a huge fan of dense orchestration so it doesn’t make sense for me to have passed on this guy for so long. I’m going to chalk it up to all of the dungeons and dragons references. Anyone digging this?
Comments
I was listening to this album non-step before my hard drive up and crashed. I don’t think I like it as much as his previous album, but that took me months and months to really get into. So who knows!
But yeah, it’s a shame how many people don’t give this guy a chance simply because of his rather precious voice.
OK. This album has officially completely infested my being. I have the melody to “Lewis Takes Off His Shirt” running through my head day and night, and I get antsy when I want to listen to the song and I can’t. I knew the infestation was official when I couldn’t stop thinking about the album during my hockey game tonight. I’m usually an ornery prick on the ice, but tonight I was just buzzing around singing “I’m never gonna give it to you!” over and over in my head. I’m really not sure what to do with myself right now.
Seriously, Jay… a few months from now, after this album has started waning for you, pick up Hee Poos Clouds. I dunno, maybe it’s just that it was the first album of his that I really fell in love with. Maybe it’s that the best song on the album is about Link. Maybe it’s just the countless trips through Princeton on the way up to visit Kevin V. and the V’s (whoah… what a great band name…) and playing that album the second you start seeing the rich-people houses. But that album has stuck to my ribs like few other albums of the whole decade.
No discredit to this recent one, though. The more I listen to it, the more I love it. It’s a shame more people seem to be unwilling to give it a chance.
Reviewed!
http://mixtapeattack.com/reviews/65
I bought this on iTunes so it’s DRM’d and I can’t upload it, but you can can just stream it from Grooveshark here: http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/album/Heartland/3924461
I had forgotten what this dude sounded like so I just gave the first album another pass. It is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with modern indie music, and there’s just no way I’d be willing to give another album of his a chance.
He Poos Clouds or the one before it? Each album is pretty different.
He Poos Clouds. Just horrible, horrible stuff on every possible level. This dude makes Sufjan look like Venom.
Most of the time, I can understand someone’s particular point of view on a band without having to agree. Not here. It just seems an awful lot of hatred for something that is, more or less, some pretty virtuosic stuff.
I just hate geeky LARP/Ren Faire type BS posing as indie rock. If I want virtuisity I’ll listen to classical music or people who actually are virtuoso’s or people who actually play this type of music unironically. Not the lowered bar “virtuosic for rock and roll” substandard of measure. It just all strikes me as so forced and wink-wink. “Oh look, he’s playing soft, flowery music on a violin and wearing a Mayhem shirt. Tee-hee…..”
And it really is saying something that I hate this (the same way I hate Sufjan) because I far from require my music to be “manly” or anything of the sort. But when something is just so undeniably forced and contrived cutesy rock, you know it must be REALLY so for it to get my goat that much.
See, I guess I don’t get “contrived” from Pallett. I get winks, but, it seems like he’s genuinely having fun with music. He’s trying new things. He does the sort of stuff that makes me laugh — not because of some in-joke in the lyrics or what have you, but because I’m struck with just how damn inventive the actual music can be. When I he’s it’s clever, I mean it in the truest sense of the word. He’s playful and I imagine him sort of penning it all out and cracking up at some of the stuff he’s coming up with, sort of like when I write a particularly brilliant piece of code.
I dunno, it’s just an impression, and maybe I’m just projecting my own fond memories of orchestra and the ASTA festival and junk, but forced and contrived? Neh. I don’t get that at all.
I vote for the you projecting option. This stuff absolutely makes me want to stab my own ears.
At least listen to the grooveshark link. Who knows. You might actually like it.
O.K. I gave it a go in the interest of fairness. No dice.
To be more specific, here’s my deal. I’m perfectly o.k. with and actually can be a huge fan of delicate, more fey music played by guys. But in terms of what I appreciate, it has to have an undercurrent of darkness or sadness (Antony & the Johnsons, Shearwater) or an overt triumphant defiance or celebration to it (Hercules & Love Affair, Passion Pit, any number of dance acts).
This dopey “Wheeee….I like Dungeons and Dragons!!!” stuff is just too stupid and (yes) contrived for me.
To make an analogy, the other types of bands/artists I mentioned are the sensitive kid on the schoolyard who I want to either cheer for and say “F yeah!” or to help out and stick up for or join in the fight with. Owen Pallet is the kid who makes you go “Damn. I can see why people pick on that dude. He’s an insufferable, pretentious dick and even I want to sock him.”
I don’t get dopey "Wheeee….I like Dungeons and Dragons!!!”
I got dopey “Wheeee….I like Old school video games!!!” from his previous albums, mind you, but I also like old school video games so that was pretty awesome.
Whatever. I like Dungeons and Dragons and old school video games. Still dopey music. Still totally unappealing.
Please don’t make me hate this guy Kev. I really can’t speak for the previous stuff yet because like I said I was really turned off by the D&D crap, but Heartland has really taken me over from a melodic point of view. I might be too dumb or ignorant to understand the pretentiousness though, and if that’s the case I’d like to keep it that way.
Jay, Kev truly does have an admirable pretension radar. And more often then not, there’s no arguing with him.
But I really do think he’s wrong about this one. It’s only pretense if you’re putting something on or trying to be something your’e not. All I get from Pallett on this album is someone who is genuinely having fun with music.
I think Kev’s real problem is that he hates gay people.
The core is that I just think the music is goofy. But if there’s anything more specific I think it’s more that I hate flag waving geekery. It’s just become so passe and when you have tons of people waving that flag, it kind of loses it’s luster and it’s appeal. It’s like the idea of mainstream punk. When something so rooted in outsider and outcast status and culture is proudly waved and attracts a large, accepting audience….then it kind of loses the main point.
Let me give a completely out of left field example and point of comparison. I hate Dan Deacon who does the whole geek with a sequencer/electronic equipment/8 bit thing. I liked Atom and His Package who pretty much did the same thing a decade earlier. I don’t like one and hate the other because one came first. I liked the fact that Atom played with hardcore punk, grind, and crust bands at a time when NOBODY was waving their geek flag, let alone doing it at His Heros is Gone shows in front of crowds of angry crust punks. That was at the time as bold and ballsy as anything GG Allin ever did. Dan Deacon doing more or less the same basic thing intentionally and in front of a crowd of people dressed the same and so ironically detached just seems stupid, forced, and contrived and without the basic core outsider status I think is integral to the whole geek culture.
But that’s really putting too much thought into it and ultimately beside the main point, which is I just think Owen Pallets music is dopey, Ren Faire garbage. But the other stuff is just kind of a side, cultural aspect to it which also annoys me.
To me, though, it sounds like you’re unable to separate the man from the music. I mean, Atom and His Package was a geek who wrote geeky music. But the music itself wears thin pretty quickly. Dan Deacon is a phony geek who writes some fairly _un_geeky music, but wraps it all in this geek veneer (e.g., the videos and whatnot). I don’t think simply using an 8-bit controller qualifies one for geekdom anymore, and I think Deacon’s music is a bit more substantial than Atom and his Package, despite all the phony bullshit attached to it.
The same applies not necessarily to Palllett, on the whole, but particularly to Heartland. Pallett is a dude who once wrote a song about the fulfillment one gets when completing tasks in video games. He once named a song Adventure.exe (which, by the way, is an adorable little song). But I think Heartland is the first album where he really dropped all that. There is little to no geekery to speak of on this album, aside from the fact that it’s a concept — a geek trope if ever there was one. But I’m certain you enjoy more than your fair share of concept albums, so why should this one bother you?
Maybe there’s a band geek element. But Pallett is a band geek. It’s not a phony Dan Deacon act. It doesn’t matter that being a band geek in 2010 isn’t the brave act it once was in the mid-80’s. The dude’s just being himself and, in doing so, wrote a fantastic, unique, and incredibly dense concept album. There’s no detached irony. At least, that’s not the impression I get.
To reiterate what I said before, to me, it really sounds like the creation of someone with a lot of ideas and talent just having fun with music. And Kev hates gay people.
Is that dude even gay? I had/have no idea, but I’d probably have less of a problem if his shtick were more gay and less LARP.
What about gay larp?
John said:Seriously, Jay… a few months from now, after this album has started waning for you, pick up Hee Poos Clouds. I dunno, maybe it’s just that it was the first album of his that I really fell in love with. Maybe it’s that the best song on the album is about Link. Maybe it’s just the countless trips through Princeton on the way up to visit Kevin V. and the V’s (whoah… what a great band name…) and playing that album the second you start seeing the rich-people houses. But that album has stuck to my ribs like few other albums of the whole decade.
No discredit to this recent one, though. The more I listen to it, the more I love it. It’s a shame more people seem to be unwilling to give it a chance.
So, I took your advice. I enjoy He Poos Clouds now, but I definitely like Has a Good Home better and Heartland is still my favorite of the three. I have to say, though, that I like this guy simply because of the melodies and the orchestration. If I had any idea what the fuck he was talking about half the time I am pretty sure I would be in the same boat as Kevin. I have always been indifferent towards lyrics in music, I always respond more to a strong melody or creative instrumentation, and that is definitely working to my advantage here.
I’m going to see him in NYC tomorrow night. I am very excited about it, but I have a feeling that I’m not going to like him so much after the fact.
Was this last night or tonight? If you’ve seen any of his videos, you might get more pumped. I think you’re in for a treat if he’s still doing the loopback performance type stuff.
Well, his videos are definitely what pumped me up about him enough to get tickets. My concern is more about the crowd than anything else, though. I’m imagining a see of super nerds and hipsters yelling about dumb shit at inappropriate times. I hope I’m wrong. The show is tonight.
I think you’ll get a different sort — the more timid, sweater-vest wearing variety of hipster. Not so much the yell-y type. Infuriating in their own right, but less concert-ruining.
Short, late review:
Absolutely. Fucking. Mind Blowing.
Hahahahahahahha awesome. Care to elaborate?
I got tix to see him at the church sanctuary on the 25th.
So, I just needed to get the short version of my review off my chest last night when I got home. I was exhausted and didn’t have time to go into any detail, but I’ll try to now.
First things first, you were very right about the crowd. They were one of the most pleasant, respectful crowds I have been part of at a show in NYC. It was nice.
Now, onto Owen. I am convinced that Kevin is 100% wrong and you are 100% right. There is nothing goofy or geeky about his performance in any way. He is simply an amazingly talented musician making some waves without the use of “traditional” rock instruments. He’s not playing a violin and a keyboard because they make “bloop bloop” sounds and are traditionally associated with nerds, he is playing them because they are incredibly versatile instruments and because he can absolutely shred on both. He made no attempts whatsoever to push a geeky/goofy agenda or vibe at all, so you really do need to read into the lyrics to get that part of it. That’s enough to convince me that he’s just doing his thing, it is no way contrived.
I thought the novelty of watching him build the loops was going to wear off after a few songs, but to me it never stopped being amazing. There are various parts on all of the albums that I assumed came from certain instruments (bass guitar, mandolin, whatever), so I was expecting the live versions of most of the songs to be much less dense. I really had no idea that he could make all of those sounds with only a violin, and it was incredible to watch as he plucked, strummed, bowed and yelled his way into these rich, layered orchestrations. I honestly loved every single second of it.
He played a great mix of songs from across all of his albums as well. I think he only missed 2 songs off of Heartland, and he hit most of the highlights off of the older stuff that I was hoping to hear including This is the Dream of Win and Regine, He Poos Clouds, and The Butcher (there were more, he played for a long time) and he played one brand new song.
The highlight for me was a song off of He Poos Clouds that I wasn’t very familiar with going in – Many Lives → 49MP. He had a guy with him that played guitar and did some simple drumming on several of the songs. The beginning to Many Lives is a rather fast, “shreddy” violin riff, and his bandmate played a harmony riff on the guitar that combined to make this amazing thing. I loved it so, so much.
He closed the encore with a cover of Mariah Carey’s Fantasy, something that I hear he does a lot. I had seen videos of him doing this previously so it wasn’t the fun surprise that it seemed to be for a lot of people in the crowd, but it was pretty cool anyway regardless of the fact that I was hoping for a surprise cover. I took a couple of videos on my phone. I’ll put them on Facebook if they look/sound OK.
Oh man, I really hope he plays The Butcher when I see him. Also, my favorite track by him, This Lamb Sells Condos. I would have thought he couldnt’ do it live just cause I didn’t know he used keyboards. But if you’re saying he’s got those up there, too.. well shit.
Sounds super awesome. I’m so pumped.
I’m way too pumped to write about this show right now, but I can honestly say it’s one of the most incredible and entertaining shows I’ve ever been to. My jaw was on the floor half the time with the things he was doing and how well he was doing it — and to top it off, the dude was hilarious. Audience banter at shows is highly underrated and can really make a good time even better.
Also, he played This Lamb Sells Condos as the last song of the night and I, judging by the fact that it seemed more unplanned than the rest, I think it’s something they solely played cause i loudly yelled the songname out when he asked what we’d like to hear earlier in the show. And my god was it amazing. Totally redone and amazing. Which, really, might have been the best part of the show — hearing how he’d rearrange the songs to work for the stage. Everything was slightly different, a bit livlier, a bit more chaotic…
man. So pumped. What a great show.
Owen tweeted last night about the First Unitarian Church being the best venue in the country. I immediately got very jealous of you. How did he recreate the female vocal from the end of This Lamb Sells Condos?
He didn’t, really. His friend did the kids part (who, might I add, was an incredibly goofy looking dude) and Pallett did the rest.
Also, did you see my tweet from the church? http://yfrog.com/1nb9hpj
The acoustics in there are incredible.
I didn’t get a chance to see your tweet until just now. So it was actually in the church, not in the basement where the punk shows are? That is fucking awesome.
Someone recorded the NY show. You can d/l it here.