Music Review: Final Fantasy – He Poos Clouds
Owen Pallett makes the most confusingly fantastic brand of composition- hinging and teetering from Indie Folk to pseudo-Tchaikovsky pieces and furthering what can only be called Baroque Pop from the charted territory of Harry Nilsson and Van Dyke Parks. It would be original enough if he had the assistance of three philharmonic mercenaries to pull it off, but for the live arrangements (at least) he is the quartet. Aided by his violin, a bottle of Stella Artois, and a loop station, a YouTube bootleg shows Pallett sampling himself up to five layers thick on some songs- difficult enough for the average rock musician, let alone someone pulling off symphony worthy string passages.
The lyrics on He Poos Clouds (the Arcade Fire touring members' second solo effort) add an even greater mystique to the Final Fantasy project. Charmingly, his moniker is named after the popular video game franchise (and I would go so far as to say that FF's Soundtrack Guru Nobuo Uematsu is a plain influence on Owen) and several references to D&D and other games can be found on the record. These underground allusions are side-swiped by ultra shy, but frustrated homosexuality inferences: a song about a closet gay man using impotence as an excuse for not consummating his marriage to a cover-up wife (see "This Lamb Sells Condos") and perhaps a personal take on finding love easier in Zelda's Link than in real life (see the title track where a Windwaker walkthrough meets his feeling that "all the boys I have ever loved have been digital").
The exemplary track- an accurately measured representation of the album's genius- is "If I Were a Carp". Willfully plucked violas and harsh washes of percussion serve as the only rhythm to meandering cellos and a distorted vocal story about a sea captain having a Moby Dick scale obsession with the honorable betrayal of a watery grave.
It occurred to me several times while traipsing He Poos Clouds that Owen Pallett could be forging the future of classical music. Merging the moodiness of Russian Composers with poetics that appeal to the uncertainty of today's younger crowd, he may become the inspiration for teenagers begging their parents for piano lessons instead of a guitar amplifier. It probably won't happen, but listening to his music makes it a very desirable, blissful rumination.
What say you?!