Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
Owen Pallett’s approach to making music is the same as the approach a carpenter takes when he’s working on a table or a rocking chair. It’s a dry, humorless approach that stakes its personality in the rote automation of one step following another – now’s the time for the legs, here’s where we sand off the corners and why don’t we throw a decorative little curly foot on the ends there.

“I don’t believe that you need something to hit you in order to write music. It can be just like computer programming or building a house. It’s pretty simple,” he said from Toronto. “When people talk about genius songwriters, I’m just like, ‘No, it’s just somebody who made a series of correct decisions.

“Musical ability requires genius and talent, but anyone can kind of achieve what Mozart or Chopin achieved. You just have to work hard at it.”

This systematic take he has for the process usually attributed to the countless invisible muses out there and the shadowy string operator of inspiration, isn’t at all to say that Pallett, a Canadian artist who writes and records under the moniker Final Fantasy, diffuses the throes of passion that are thought to be the forebears of any piece of music worth its salt, it’s just that he understands there are processes. From these processes come the effervescent and grandiose pillars of musical adventure that are found on his latest, “He Poos Clouds,” a title so lurid that one would have no way to know the music contained on it was so luminous. The music delivers on a sense of childhood wonderment, while the lyrics seem to be grafted onto this sea of Never Never Land abnormally, as if a current of adult pessimism had been a stowaway on the shoulders of Peter Pan or the wings of Tinkerbell and tainted the place, putting his doubtful, sarcastic dark into the drinking water. It’s quite a juxtaposition and one that makes it right to ask questions and sit helplessly listening. These songs sound like they should be coming out of a cathedral, with the strings and orchestrations swelling like cumulonimbus clouds ready to strike fear and put on a light show. They also seem to be made by angels with dirty faces, out on a bender through the red light district of wherever.

Pallett dreams of steeping his music with more, making it bigger and bustier until it needs its own post office because it stretches for miles in all directions. He studied composition at the University of Toronto and since has always wanted his music played by symphonies. He was recently holed up with the Arcade Fire, conducting orchestrations for their sophomore album. At the time he was rung for this interview, he had to walk out of the recording studio and up the stairs to talk, biting into an apple as he did. His work with Win Butler made him want to turn his own songs more operatic and splendored, with weeping strings and woodwinds and everything else you could imagine. He already harnesses something mysterious, but he’d like to bring it into bows and reeds and then let it erupt into a mountain of powdered ideas.

“I’m hoping that in the future I’ll be writing orchestral music for my own records some day,” he said. “In the past, I’ve liked more conceptual kinds of music. I liked music when it was going too big. I like music that tries to accomplish something. If it fails, it’s also kind of interesting.”

Final Fantasy
Tomlab Records