By: Eamon McGrath
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Final Fantasy - Photo by Eamon McGrath
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Owen Pallett is a man of mystery. Now, at least, I’ve seen his face in person and up close, instead of a silhouetted photo in some artsy Canadian magazine, a head in the crowd of people that is the Arcade Fire, or dolled-up on the cover of a magazine dressed as a medieval knight; now, I can attach a face and some normal clothes, at the very least, to the distinct, operatic, and unique voice on records like Has A Good Home and the latest opus He Poos Clouds.
Pallett walks onto the stage as comfortable as a ghost in a hospital; he paces, back and forth, humbly, toward the offstage area and his effects-pedal setup, moving for the waist-high organ that is plugged into those very pedals, those of which are also linked up to his one-and-only violin.
The house lights dim, and Pallett raises his hands in a glorious V, already signifying his inevitable victory over the crowd, and almost immediately begins to generate some sort of rhythmic drone with his violin and a pedal, looping it into a beat, and then backing away from it all, seemingly content with the tamed digital beast that had just taken shape—how very Frankensteinian it all was—balancing on the heads of awestruck onlookers.
Eventually, we’re taken, hand-in-hand, through the alleys and stairways of the mind of Owen Pallett, and his confessional lyrics—enhanced only by the overhead projector-based moving artwork provided by a Toronto artist behind him—seem to correspond perfectly with the sweeping, illustrious violin grooves and long, droning tones resting underneath them.
Pallett is also a man of contradiction; his music at once channels Beethoven and Saetia, his lyrics are at once inexplicably personal and simultaneously about elves, orcs, medieval battles and the genitalia of clouds, and he proudly wears a dishevelled Van Halen shirt while proudly admitting to be gay. He treads between boundaries his fanbase are unaware even exist, and his casual, laid-back persona, contrasted by the tension and technicality of his music is no exception to this comittment to paradox.
As Pallett parades through the highlights of his abums Has A Good Home and He Poos Clouds, the crowd sits, cross-legged, in the palm of his hand, even as it clenches his bow and graces across his violin’s strings. Never before have I been as captivated by a one-man show as I was during the emotional roller coaster of Final Fantasy, and never will I be this captivated again; I stood, at the corner of the stage, finding my jaw closer to the floor as every song passed.
By the time he was forced onstage for a second encore, Owen Pallett had expanded more minds than LSD and changed more lives than the Latter Day Saints. Perhaps the most powerful moment of his set came when he discreetly played a Mariah Carey song, (“Fantasy”) the expectation being that it was twistedly tongue-in-cheek. This was not the case—sarcasm does not sit well with a man posessing the genius of Owen Pallett—instead, Pallett’s virtuousity proved, over the course of the cover, that he was wholeheartedly serious, and of course, the crowd replaced their laughing with a thick, urban silence as the house lights rose once again.
Location Info:
The Power Plant
Artist Info: Final Fantasy
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