It’s probably a little unfair to raise the subject when discussing Heartland, Owen Pallett’s latest opus - given that he’s done all he can to distance himself from his former nom de guerre, and tends to deflect questions about his gaming habits - but I lost a large chunk of my teenage years to Final Fantasy VII. It was so utterly divergent from my awkward thirteen-year-old world that its paradox of hard-edged pixels and oh-so-real characters took on a convincing sheen of hyper-reality. For a time I was more in love with the confines of its ones and zeroes than in the ebb and flow of the real world. Not an admission anyone should make in public really, but I only raise the subject as common ground – when, on the title track of his second album, Pallett sung “All the boys I have ever loved have been / Digital”, it was an open confession all too easy to relate to.
And there was something appropriately artificial about the demeanour of He Poos Clouds, a rigidity to its string arrangements that brought to mind a cartoonish world shaded in blocky colour and stark contrast. It was largely the product of its gestation: an ambitious album for string quartet written and arranged via the medium of a loop pedal, it was enchanting but self-contained. Heartland, on the other hand, shimmers with inviting warmth and a greater breadth of ambition. Given an orchestra’s depth of field – what a perfect development that’s turned out to be – Pallett has gone wild, and made his imaginary world a reality through attention to the most incidental details.
So the boy he loves on Heartland – Lewis, a farmer who worships Owen as his God, apparently – is anything but digital. The music’s almost impossibly lush tones are earthy and slightly sepia-tinted, but his characters are more real than ever. Happily, what hasn’t been lost is the deliciously voyeuristic slant to his lyrics. A sense of detachment from the subject, which in He Poos Clouds took the form of a computer game in which he controlled his object of desire, is more alive than ever in Owen’s self-imposed status as a deity. As ever, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that hidden beneath the surreal sheen of his wordplay lurks a cheeky album length innuendo. As if track titles like ‘Lewis Takes His Shirt Off’ weren’t enough, he throws the gauntlet down pretty clearly on ‘The Great Elsewhere’ when he invites the protagonist to “Wrestle, let’s wrestle / You can pin me to anything”. This God doesn’t just love, although he clearly does – he lusts. And better, he’s in control. Hardly the purest of role models then, but one with an impressive command of implied sexuality.
All of which wouldn’t matter a jot, of course, if Heartland wasn’t as heartstoppingly brilliant as it frequently is. Opener ‘Midnight Directives’ rattles with brittle drum hits and muted brass, and the ever-escalating strings of third song ‘Mount Alpentine’ are gloriously melodramatic. But on first listen it’s only with the keyboard lilt of ‘Red Sun No. 5’ that the album’s riches begin to reveal themselves – its central theme not a chorus but a startling chord shift, that in a single move changes from triumph to painful melancholy. ‘Lewis Takes Action’ is Heartland’s pop hit, referencing everything from Spirited Away to Greek mythology, but best of all is the album’s centrepiece ‘The Great Elsewhere’. Pivoting around a stammering, awkward arpeggio, it builds and builds to overwhelming percussive monster before a string overture steals the final minute. It’s also the finest song Pallett’s ever recorded.
At the risk of over-analysing for far too long, it’s probably suffice to say that Heartland’s riches are near impossible to confine within a review. It’s a record that teems with subtlety, revealing more with every listen. At this early point, Pallett has set a Merriweather Post Pavilion-high watermark for 2010, even eclipsing that record’s considerable charms. And in a worrying twist, I’m already finding that the real world is beginning to look and sound pale and sickly by comparison.
By Rory Gibb
No comments:
Post a Comment