Categories : Featured Review, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 5 / 5 Reviewer: Garth Paulson |
Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy) is an artist who progresses in huge leaps, not steps. Instead of timid shuffling, he announced himself with a confident lunge on 2005’s Has a Good Home, crafting a unique set of clever indie pop songs with little more than a violin and an army of effect pedals. On 2006’s He Poos Clouds he bounded forward, writing for a string quartet and structuring the album around the schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons without, miraculously, sacrificing any accessibility. On 2008’s dual EPs, Spectrum, 14th Century, and Plays to Please, he expanded his sound away from his trademark strings and further opened the door to collaboration.
On his latest album (and first under his own name) though, Pallett isn’t content to make just his now expected leap. Instead he makes at least three. He delves into full-blown orchestration with the Czech Symphony Strings and the St. Kitts’ Winds, he dives head first into the world of electronic composition and he throws himself at heady, metatextual narrative. Astoundingly, he pulls all of it off, seemingly without breaking a sweat.
The first of his great leaps shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Pallett has proven himself a talented string arranger many times over and he proves just as capable with a full orchestra at his disposal. That’s not to say that his arrangements aren’t impressive. Grand though Heartland may be, the string swells and horn brushes provide drama, jaw dropping theatrics and puckish whimsy without ever becoming gaudy.
Pallett’s second leap is more of a surprise. Thanks to his looping, his previous work always contained hints of electronic textures, but never anything like Heartland. Here he confidently employs synth washes, programmed drums and electronic blips to create off-kilter synthetic soundscapes that often form the basis of his songs. While the electronics themselves make for fine listening, they way they’re woven into the album’s orchestration is jaw dropping, in how unnoticeable it is. Instead of having an ongoing battle between the album’s classicist and futuristic tones, Pallett sews the two together seamlessly, as if they couldn’t exist without one another.
Adding to the staggering ambition of Heartland is Pallett’s third leap. Using first person monologues, tirades and laments, the album tells the story of Lewis, a farmer from a fantasy world with a predilection for bursts of ultra-violence. Over the album’s 12 tracks Lewis departs his titular heartland to confront Owen, his creator, enemy and occasional object of affection. It’s the type of pretentious subject matter that can easily derail a project, but Pallett rises above such traps. Though Heartland does tell Lewis’ story effectively, enjoyment of the album does not hinge on combing liner notes or gritting teeth through clunky exposition. The story of Lewis and Owen is there for those who are interested, but those who aren’t can still revel in the individual songs, each a dizzying concoction of pop wonder.
Yes, despite its scale, despite its subject matter, despite the repeated presence of piccolo, Heartland is still pop, and that’s possibly the most shining achievement for an album full of nothing but. No matter how lofty his ambitions became, no matter how dense his subject matter and how thick his sound, Pallett never forgot the simple joys of a catchy chorus and a beat you can tap your foot to. Band geeks may swoon, producers may rush to their drum machines to prepare remixes and English majors may pore over their copies of Dr. Faustus to parse out the similarities, but it’s all in the name of pop. What a leap.
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