Owen Pallett talks candidly about misconceptions of his new album, journalists and his recent name change
Zack MacRae

“It’s not a concept album,” said Owen Pallett, sitting knees to his chest in the hallway of the artist/media area of the Sleeman Centre after his performance at Hillside Inside last weekend. While answering questions with a certain degree of elegance, the singer-songwriter, violinist and composer from Toronto is noticeably worn out.
Fidgeting with his car keys, jacket already done up, the interview seems to be routine for Pallett. Lately in papers, magazines and on the radio, Pallett, known formerly as Final Fantasy seems to have a monopoly. Maybe it’s because of his newly released album Heartland that has received widespread critical acclaim as one of this year’s best concept albums. Or perhaps the interest is coming from his live show and his ability to pull together multi-layered orchestral pieces out of thin air using his trademark looping pedal.
It seems that during this particular interview, Pallett skips the formalities and clears the air a little bit. The following is a candid conversation with Owen Pallett where his words speak for themselves.

Photo by Rashaad Bhamjee

Owen Pallett: Not really actually. I’m the sort of person that feels as if every record is a concept record, even if there is no concept. I feel that the absence of the concept is in itself a concept. I’m not trying to get too theoretical or anything like that, I’m just trying to skirt the notion that this is a concept record cause it really isn’t. I never really described it as such, people just kind of jumped on that because they thought it was a comfortable way to describe the record. It’s a record that does have a mythology behind it and I don’t want that mythology to affect anyone’s listening experience. Unless they wanted it to. It kind of bummed me out a little bit when the record was put out in the UK. All the people could talk about was ‘Oh, it’s a prog rock record or a concept record,’ when it’s really the opposite of that. It just had a narrative behind it.

TO: So you didn’t want the narrative to take over other aspects of the record?

OP: Yeah. I don’t know man, maybe I just didn’t write the press release properly or something. I should of actually wrote ‘it’s not a concept album’ on it. In the last four months I’ve formed a very different opinion about music journalists. Which isn’t to say it’s a negative one. I just think a lot of them are closer to being writers then actual journalists. I had to decide at a certain stage whether or not I wanted to draw attention to the mythology of the record, or whether or not I just wanted to put it out.

TO: I read that you were also writing a score for a film.

OP: Yeah, I was fired actually. And that sounds harsh, but getting fired in the film industry is far less of a big deal than it is in say, an accounting firm or something.

TO: What happened?

OP: It was just a scheduling conflict.

TO: Keeping Heartland in mind, was writing this album similar to writing a film score?

No, it was the opposite actually. When you write a film score you are typically trying to create a music that will pick up the image. But when I make a record, that music can exist without any sort of imagery. My music exists best when people are engaging it on a level without any visuals. But when it comes to making a film score, you are so much in service of the director. To be honest it’s so far removed from any sort of creative activity. It’s the sort of thing that in order to accomplish you need the same set of skills that you do as a songwriter or arranger, but the motivations are completely different

TO: You’ve said in the past that you wrote albums with friends in mind, but with Heartland you’ve engaged a larger audience. Who, if anyone did you write Heartland for?

No one person in particular. I was hoping to make a record that I could give to people that I didn’t know and have them appreciate it without having to know anything about me. Which wasn’t necessarily the case with the earlier records. With those I might have been specifically thinking ‘Oh, I wrote this record to make my boyfriend happy,’ or ‘to make my friend Steve happy.’ So with this record it was a really different experience to be thinking about strangers. It’s an interesting thing, you know. And it was something I hadn’t thought about until working on this one.

TO: With this record, just listening to it and watching you perform, it seems like you’re putting a lot into it. I understand that you did the singing, songwriting, arranging, producing and performing. Was this album more exhausting or stressful to make then previous ones?

Yeah, much more. It was really difficult actually. I guess I didn’t anticipate how much work was going to be involved in self-producing an orchestral record. If I were to say this to any one of my composer friends they might kind of roll their eyes at me, but it is actually like a big deal when you are singing and writing the lyrics and putting all the stuff together. So having to look pretty for a photo shoot or something like that did get the best of me at times.

The name change was due to going international and experiencing difficulties with copyright laws. How do you feel about breaking out of Final Fantasy and coming into your own?

It’s weird to me, I’ve just never really associated the Final Fantasy music with my person. Final Fantasy was kind of just this thing that I did. Even now I use the words Final Fantasy to describe this particular kind of music that I make. What I need is a new band name, but I think it’s kind of late for that. I can’t really expect to go from one name to another, even Prince couldn’t get away with it.