Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
(2006, Tomlab)
When The Arcade Fire came through town a couple years ago, their string arranger and touring violinist Owen Pallett also served as opening act under the moniker of Final Fantasy. The crowd loved his geekishly sincere songs about romance, magic, myth and video games. Many of us eagerly bought copies of his album, ...Has a Good Home!!!!!!!!!!, but were a bit disappointed that the recording didn't capture the creativity and wonder of his live set. It was pretty good but seemed hastily recorded and had little variety although there were a couple stand out tracks. Now Pallett is back with a bigger budget and sharpened skills. From the opening bars of He Poos Clouds, it's clear that the ante is being uped.
There's more of everything on He Poos Clouds. More orchestration, a greater variety of instruments with highly nuanced arrangement, better production values, more creativity, more melody and generally more realized potential. Pallett's loveably absurd pretenses are also magnified, the recording itself is a concept album based on the 8 schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons. The title is a sillified reference referrence to some mystical proverb or such.
As could be expected, the primary instruments are strings. This time he brings in an entire quartet as well as quite a bit of harpsichord, piano and percussion. Not so many effects pedals and tape loopings I'm afraid. Don't mislabel this as chamber-pop though. The instrumental choices may imply it and at times even sound it but each song creates it's own nitch with the sound without really adhering to any one genre. To say it another way, the writing style changes even if the instruments don't.
Whereas ...Has A Good Home!!!!! mostly sounds the same, things get a bit diversified here. Some tracks like "I'm Afraid of Japan" sound as if they're composed for quartet, others such as "Song Song Song" and "This Lamb Sells Condos" are more like pop songs that've been adapted. With different instruments a song like "Many Lives -> 49" would be a riff-heavy rocker.
Did I mention that the guy has an amazing voice yet? He does. It's youthful yet seasoned and endlessly emotive, swoonworthy even. It can deliver lines such as, "When his massive genitals refuse to co-operate no amount of therapy can hope to save him marriage.", with the utmost sincerity. With that emo hair and his gayness I'm suprised he isn't a bigger hit on the Myspace circuit.
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