The anticipation is finally over, and Owen Pallett’s (formerly known as Final Fantasy) new album Heartland is available to buy online. There is a lot to this album, aside from having just set the musical standard for 2010 exceptionally high. I could go on and on about how much I’ve enjoyed Pallett’s music for some time now, both as a fellow violinist and generally a great admirer of his work. I think, however, that this is Pallett’s best work yet. It is poppy and ethereal and with amazing orchestral arrangements to which members of Arcade Fire contributed — there’s even a guest appearance by Nico Muhly.
Heartland has a story line to it that is worth examining. Essentially, it is about a fictional world (no, not like that one), that goes by the name Spectrum. The people in this fictional world are modeled after Pallett and consider him their primary deity. There are several characters at play, first introduced on the EP Spectrum, 14th Century:
Owen Pallett: musician, narrator, and the deity in Spectrum. As a God, he seems a bit tempestuous, with “a temper as shiny as any bling”, as he declares on ‘The Butcher’. He likes the fact that he is completely in charge of this world, stating it as nerdily as possible: “all your bases belong to us.” He seems slightly ambivalent about the people, but he falls in love with a heterosexual farmer by the name of…
Lewis: who is flattered by the fact that Owen is lavishing him with attention, but also a little unnerved. He also happens to be ultra-violent. So when all this attention gets to him, he goes a little crazy, and as Owen puts it: “climbs up a mountain and disembowels me… and that’s the end of the album!”
Blue Imelda: Not much to say about her, apart from the fact that she’s the saddest bitch in all of Spectrum. This is apparently due to the fact that she’s not getting any. She seems to be lusting after Lewis, but Lewis is devoted to his religion, declaring that he’ll “keep myself as pious as my body will allow.” As he sees it:
I am just a farmer, and the body of a farmer / Has one eye on the pussy and the other on the plough
Lewis seems to view her as dishonest and dangerous, and making serfs of the people of the land.
No-Face: he is the cockatrice mentioned on both the album and EP. A cockatrice is a mythical beast, popular in modern fantasy games, that can kill you if you see its face. He also seems to be a kind of false prophet, attempting to lead Owen and the other people of Spectrum astray:
Why can’t these people see? Theirs is a life of mimicry…it isn’t poetry, it’s an orchestration, orchestration of their own demise!
When it comes to interviews, Owen is pretty reticent about the details of the plot, preferring to “let the album speak for itself.” But the story comes through with a close reading of the album’s lyrics.
Lewis has left his wife and daughter to properly devote himself to religion, after a spiritual experience that struck him when he realised his own mortality:
Until the sun rose crimson
Crept across my limbs and
I saw that they were earthen
That they decay and worsen
Much time is given over to Lewis’ relationship with his deity, and how it sours when he realizes he can’t quite process the attention he’s getting. He takes off his shirt, and is perturbed to realize that his god is staring at him somewhat lustily. Where he once declared his love for Owen, he eventually grows fearful, and resentful of the fact that his “every move is guided by the bidding of the singer.” Finally, he takes action, attacking other characters as Spectrum is plunged into war and bloodshed, with thousands of soldiers taking part. He throws Imelda down a mountainside, so that Spectrum may be free. He finds No-Face, and breaks his jaw, after which he can never speak again.
On ‘Tryst With Mephistopheles’ (Mephistophelese being Owen’s symbolic opposite) Lewis considers their relationship up to this point. He declares:
I’ve been in love with Owen ever since
I heard the strains of Psalm 21.
You have granted him the desire of his heart
and have not withheld the request of his lips.
But that is exactly what Lewis refuses on ‘Lewis Takes Off His Shirt’:
I know what you’re looking for, and I’m never gonna give it to you.
The relationship has changed: Lewis, having given up his life and his family, and having resisted the (presumably rather bootylicious) charms of Imelda, finds that his god is obsessive and petty, adoring Lewis in the present, but ultimately indifferent to the eventual fate of his creations. Lewis comes to hate him, resenting him for a life misspent. He seems to be emboldened by the implied intimacy of their relationship, but this only encourages him to take it upon himself to rid Spectrum of what he has come to see as a tyrant.
After this recap, he scales a mountain (presumably ‘Mount Alpentine’) and plunging an iron spike into Owen’s eyes, declares: “Your light is spent!” He dies, and the song ends with the words: “the author has been removed.”
There are many references on this record. It’s possible the title itself is a reference to Heartland, a video game played on the ZX Spectrum. The first line of ‘Keep The Dog Quiet’ is a reference to Arcade Fire’s ‘My Body is a Cage’. No-Face’s song on the EP contains the line “Why can’t these people see? Theirs is a life of mimicry”, a reference to Destroyer’s ‘Looter’s Follies’. ‘Your Light Is Spent’ is a song title on Owen’s first album.
I’m not sure if knowing all this improves the experience of listening to Heartland. I love a good story arc, so having a closer understanding of the characters behind the works somehow makes it even more special to me. If you want a far better, more in-depth analysis of the album, go here and here and here.
Heartland is available online right now, and it’s astonishingly good.
Heartland
mp3
The anticipation is finally over, and Owen Pallett’s (formerly known as Final Fantasy) new album Heartland is available to buy online. There is a lot to this album, aside from having just set the musical standard for 2010 exceptionally high. I could go on and on about how much I’ve enjoyed Pallett’s music for some time now, both as a fellow violinist and generally a great admirer of his work. I think, however, that this is Pallett’s best work yet. It is poppy and ethereal and with amazing orchestral arrangements to which members of Arcade Fire contributed — there’s even a guest appearance by Nico Muhly.
Heartland has a story line to it that is worth examining. Essentially, it is about a fictional world (no, not like that one), that goes by the name Spectrum. The people in this fictional world are modeled after Pallett and consider him their primary deity. There are several characters at play, first introduced on the EP Spectrum, 14th Century:
Owen Pallett: musician, narrator, and the deity in Spectrum. As a God, he seems a bit tempestuous, with “a temper as shiny as any bling”, as he declares on ‘The Butcher’. He likes the fact that he is completely in charge of this world, stating it as nerdily as possible: “all your bases belong to us.” He seems slightly ambivalent about the people, but he falls in love with a heterosexual farmer by the name of…
Lewis: who is flattered by the fact that Owen is lavishing him with attention, but also a little unnerved. He also happens to be ultra-violent. So when all this attention gets to him, he goes a little crazy, and as Owen puts it: “climbs up a mountain and disembowels me… and that’s the end of the album!”
Blue Imelda: Not much to say about her, apart from the fact that she’s the saddest bitch in all of Spectrum. This is apparently due to the fact that she’s not getting any. She seems to be lusting after Lewis, but Lewis is devoted to his religion, declaring that he’ll “keep myself as pious as my body will allow.” As he sees it:
I am just a farmer, and the body of a farmer / Has one eye on the pussy and the other on the plough
Lewis seems to view her as dishonest and dangerous, and making serfs of the people of the land.
No-Face: he is the cockatrice mentioned on both the album and EP. A cockatrice is a mythical beast, popular in modern fantasy games, that can kill you if you see its face. He also seems to be a kind of false prophet, attempting to lead Owen and the other people of Spectrum astray:
Why can’t these people see? Theirs is a life of mimicry…it isn’t poetry, it’s an orchestration, orchestration of their own demise!
When it comes to interviews, Owen is pretty reticent about the details of the plot, preferring to “let the album speak for itself.” But the story comes through with a close reading of the album’s lyrics.
Lewis has left his wife and daughter to properly devote himself to religion, after a spiritual experience that struck him when he realised his own mortality:
Until the sun rose crimson
Crept across my limbs and
I saw that they were earthen
That they decay and worsen
Much time is given over to Lewis’ relationship with his deity, and how it sours when he realizes he can’t quite process the attention he’s getting. He takes off his shirt, and is perturbed to realize that his god is staring at him somewhat lustily. Where he once declared his love for Owen, he eventually grows fearful, and resentful of the fact that his “every move is guided by the bidding of the singer.” Finally, he takes action, attacking other characters as Spectrum is plunged into war and bloodshed, with thousands of soldiers taking part. He throws Imelda down a mountainside, so that Spectrum may be free. He finds No-Face, and breaks his jaw, after which he can never speak again.
On ‘Tryst With Mephistopheles’ (Mephistophelese being Owen’s symbolic opposite) Lewis considers their relationship up to this point. He declares:
I’ve been in love with Owen ever since
I heard the strains of Psalm 21.
In the Bible, Psalm 21 contains the lines:
You have granted him the desire of his heart
and have not withheld the request of his lips.
But that is exactly what Lewis refuses on ‘Lewis Takes Off His Shirt’:
I know what you’re looking for, and I’m never gonna give it to you.
The relationship has changed: Lewis, having given up his life and his family, and having resisted the (presumably rather bootylicious) charms of Imelda, finds that his god is obsessive and petty, adoring Lewis in the present, but ultimately indifferent to the eventual fate of his creations. Lewis comes to hate him, resenting him for a life misspent. He seems to be emboldened by the implied intimacy of their relationship, but this only encourages him to take it upon himself to rid Spectrum of what he has come to see as a tyrant.
After this recap, he scales a mountain (presumably ‘Mount Alpentine’) and plunging an iron spike into Owen’s eyes, declares: “Your light is spent!” He dies, and the song ends with the words: “the author has been removed.”
There are many references on this record. It’s possible the title itself is a reference to Heartland, a video game played on the ZX Spectrum. The first line of ‘Keep The Dog Quiet’ is a reference to Arcade Fire’s ‘My Body is a Cage’. No-Face’s song on the EP contains the line “Why can’t these people see? Theirs is a life of mimicry”, a reference to Destroyer’s ‘Looter’s Follies’. ‘Your Light Is Spent’ is a song title on Owen’s first album.
I’m not sure if knowing all this improves the experience of listening to Heartland. I love a good story arc, so having a closer understanding of the characters behind the works somehow makes it even more special to me. If you want a far better, more in-depth analysis of the album, go here and here and here.
Heartland is available online right now, and it’s astonishingly good.
And his live performances are highly recommended.