The music of Owen Pallett came into my life in 2008, by way of my then-boyfriend who told me, “you gotta hear this guy Final Fantasy – he’s amazing!”. Having grown up playing a stringed instrument myself (the cello, if you were wondering) and having always been a little disenchanted with classical, there was nothing that thrilled me more than hearing a fellow string geek playing music that appealed more to the stuff I was into. I first saw him perform in December 2008 and I remember leaving the venue thinking that I’d thrown it all away by not continuing to play my instrument. From the first second I saw him, Owen Pallett had me thinking that I wanted to be not only a better musician, but a better person.

Fast forward a couple of years and he’s shed the Final Fantasy name, but the live experience he offers is still as enthralling as ever. This was his second of three nights at the beautiful Famous Spiegeltent in Hyde Park’s Festival Garden, on the back of last year’s Heartland, the first album under his own name. Pallett’s first port of call after tuning his violin was to remove his shoes. Now standing before a packed crowd in socks, he raised his violin and made the delicate pizzicato intro into ‘Took You Two Years To Win My Heart’, making his way through the song with looped harmonics and gentle but forcefully controlled vocals. Pallett’s setup may look minimal – keyboard, loop pedal and violin – and to the uninitiated it may seem farcical to think that he might be able to create sounds even close to the orchestral lushness of his records, but the world that he weaves from his fingertips is unthinkably magical.

For the most part, Pallett’s live arrangements are faithful to his recorded work, producing almost always note-perfect renditions with impressive force – his fluid double-stopping on ‘This Is The Dream of Win and Regine’ could have made a virtuoso tremble, and his voice displayed an incredible ability to leap from a shy whisper to a level croon to a powerful yell. But there are also songs which he has totally changed for live performances; while on record ‘Midnight Directives’ starts with a calm wind, live it was a beast of a song with a staggeringly frenetic pizzicato introduction that looped throughout, and ‘This Lamb Sells Condos’ traded its studio keys for a violin-only performance that saw soaring cross-string action and that wonderful bridge given a whole new life while Pallett looped his own voice to create two separate vocal tracks. Pallett is a perfectionist, but makes it seem so effortless; though he started a few songs, like ‘The Great Elsewhere’, again due to uneven timing with the loops he was about to create, the results once things got going were faultless. Songs from his newest EP A Swedish Love Story were also a treat, with a particular highlight in the upbeat ‘Scandal at the Parkade’.

On top of displaying an absurd amount of talent, Pallett was equally as entertaining between songs, inviting audience members to suggest songs for him to play for the parts in the set list that he hadn’t yet decided (the show was altogether one that felt a little ad-libbed, like he was just playing from the heart rather than playing from a piece of paper). He also spoke of his day trip to Bondi Beach and how he was the pastiest person there – “my skin thinks that my hair is red” – and looking around the room, it was clear that the audience was delighted with Pallett not only as a musician, but as a person too. After heckles for his covers of Joanna Newsom’s ‘Peach, Plum, Pear’ and Mariah Carey’s ‘Fantasy’, he explained that he no longer really liked to do covers because they had become a little trite. The heckling continued, and one punter shouted out “do a cover Owen, you’re good at that!” to which he replied “I know. I’m also a very good songwriter” to rapturous applause. Despite his protests, the song directly following this exchange was an exquisite cover of Bloc Party’s ‘This Modern Love’, in which he sang all the different parts, from quiet mutters to anguished half-screams. Though it seemed that this was the trade-off for his usual recent cover of Caribou’s ‘Odessa’, it was a perfect re-imagining of a song that most crowd members may have forgotten over the years, poignant as ever and a strong testament to Pallett’s knack for finding his own distinct meaning in other people’s art.

Closing the main part of his set with the bubbly ‘Lewis Takes Off His Shirt’, Pallett re-emerged with ‘Oh Heartland, Up Yours!’, a song which he said he’s still yet to figure out how to play properly – of course there was no sign of this in the actual performance, which plodded along steadily, helped by the looped key bass and his even voice. Though it’s accompanied by wind instruments in the studio version, again there was no sense of anything missing here. ‘Many Lives -> 49 MP’ showed Pallett screaming into his violin to emanate the more gang-like shouts on record while playing the violin part beautifully and powerfully, before thanking the audience and slipping, again, into the blackness.

This guy is one of the best there is out there right now, quite simply put. There’s no one else doing it this way, mixing innovation with charm and a constant thirst for perfection. I said before that the first time I saw Owen Pallett, he made me want to be a better person; after seeing him twice this week, I’ll change that to say that Owen Pallett just makes me want to be Owen Pallett. Can’t think of anything better to aim for.

Set:
Took You Two Years To Win My Heart
Flare Gun
Midnight Directives
This Lamb Sells Condos
This Is The Dream Of Win & Regine
A Man With No Ankles
Lewis Takes Action
Scandal at the Parkade
This Modern Love
That’s When The Audience Died
The Great Elsewhere
Song Song Song
Lewis Takes Off His Shirt
—
Oh Heartland, Up Yours!
Many Lives > 49 MP

Canadian mathematician turned experimental/electronic musician Dan Snaith, better known as Caribou, released a sonic mindblower last year in the form of Swim – a total departure from his earlier work and a wonderful mess of soundscapes. Ahead of his appearances in Sydney – at Playground Weekender and at the Metro with Four Tet on 17 February – we caught up to chat about the latest record.

Whereabouts are you right now and how has your year been?

We go on stage in Cologne in about 20 minutes. It’s been incredible, this whole year has just been overwhelming. It’s been an incredible year.

You’ve said that Swim was influenced by your new found love of water after you learned to swim recently. What was it that attracted you, and how did you emulate it?

It wasn’t even specifically being underwater, but having the elements in it, the dynamics of water. So in particular, synthesising sounds that kind of swell and decay in the way that a wave might, or move from one side of the stereo from left to right, a kind of fluid washing back and forth – things like that, they just turn back to the dynamics of water in the kinds of sounds that I use. There’s a lot of synthesised sounds, you’re kind of building them from the ground up, you have a choice of how to build the sounds so that’s where a lot of those decisions entered into it.

(more…)

Supported by: The Middle East

Let me preface my recap by saying that before High Violet, I would have considered myself a casual fan of The National. A friend introduced me to them via Boxer in early 2008 and I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t blown off my feet the way I was the first time I heard their latest album, which ended up being my top pick of 2010. It was love at first listen, and like countless others who heard the record, I found myself relating to every aspect of it and knew, after repeated listens, that with music like this existing in the world, that no one can ever really be alone. It’s taken the full week since my double National live experience to really be able to articulate what I’d like to say about the shows – they were absolutely different and both offered an individual glimpse into what the music of this band means. The standard for live music in 2011 has been set extremely high already after these shows, and considering they were in the first week of the year, that’s no easy feat.

Townsville’s The Middle East, a buzz band in every sense of the word in this country for a while now, opened up both nights. The Middle East does atmospheric folk well – all seven members are able instrumentalists, and when they hit the mark they hit it damn well, as evidenced by huge-sounding numbers like their breakthrough ‘Blood’. The harmonies were spot-on both nights and created a wonderful atmosphere, so when they do things like this so right, why do they feel the need to venture into experimentation? The song in question, known only as ‘The Spoken Word Song’ due to a lack of any studio version, could easily be omitted from their show to make for a more seamless experience, especially due to the band’s strengths lying within more conventional melody and structure. With lines like “my hands were like monkeys in the jungle”, the song comes across more as a poor joke than anything and on these two evenings, really broke up the flow of what was otherwise quite a fluid and well-paced set.

The National – 07/01

Walking on stage to atmospheric music and a dimly lit purple screen, the members of The National (plus their two brass section guests) looked somewhat sombre as they opened proceedings with ‘Runaway’. Matt Berninger’s sonorous voice was surprisingly just as affecting live, but the mood changed up quickly when they followed with Boxer‘s ‘Mistaken For Strangers’. The set that followed focused heavily on their last two albums, with only three songs played from earlier efforts, but to the swelling and passionate crowd it didn’t seem to matter much. What was perhaps the most surprising thing about the set was just how at ease the band was – for a bunch of guys who write such moody songs, they were unexpectedly upbeat, flinging jokes at the audience and laughing amongst themselves, especially when Berninger introduced ‘Slow Show’ as a wedding song – for those who don’t actually understand the song, of course. It was one example of a song that is slightly changed live, with a more sluggish feel than the studio version, but considering the atmosphere of the show in general and the extreme enthusiasm of the crowd itself, there was hardly room to fault. Songs from High Violet proved to be as powerful live as on record, with the band performing all but ‘Little Faith’, and the atmosphere in the room was truly palpable by the time that opening drum beat of ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ sounded across the increasingly hot and sweaty room. The beauty of Berninger’s voice is that it’s just as striking at a low whisper (demonstrated perfectly in surprise track ‘Green Gloves’) as it is at a high screech as demonstrated in more energetic tracks like ‘Abel’, especially touching when coupled with the thousands of voices singing along. Keys were showed off on main set closers ‘England’ and ‘Fake Empire’, before the band exited and returned with an ecstatic ‘Mr November’. If the entire show had consisted only of the two songs that followed, though, it still would have been a more emotionally uplifting show than any other – with the opening fuzz of ‘Terrible Love’ the room was already buzzing, but when Berninger lifted himself through the surging crowd to the second barrier and walked along it, holding hands with breathless fans as he sang “it takes an ocean not to break” into the eyes of each individual, there was a true sense of unity and passion swelling around the room. Considering the raw nature of High Violet, it was an intensely personal experience to be in such close proximity to the man himself as he sang such real words, and when the band followed that up with an unplugged ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’ (video above), 2000 voices rang out together, singing the same words despite being from all walks of life, and it just felt perfect.

Set:
Runaway
Mistaken For Strangers
Anyone’s Ghost
Slow Show
Squalor Victoria
Afraid Of Everyone
Bloodbuzz Ohio
Lemonworld
Lit Up
Conversation 16
Sorrow
Abel
Apartment Story
Green Gloves
England
Fake Empire
—
Mr. November
Terrible Love
Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks

The National – 08/01

The second show was actually the first on sale, and though it would seem that such a nuance might not make a difference to the band, there’s a sneaking suspicion that it might have after all – the set on the second evening was geared much more towards an older fanbase, with songs stretching back as far as 2003′s Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers – an unexpected bonus. Walking on this time to a Stevie Nicks track, the band again started proceedings with ‘Runaway’ and this time pulled out a Boxer track not heard the previous night, ‘Brainy’. The atmosphere seemed a little calmer tonight, and again all High Violet tracks were played with the exception of one (this time, surprisingly, ‘Lemonworld’, which proved to be one of their most successful songs in the last year). The first pre-Boxer track of the evening, ‘All The Wine’, came as quite a surprise and was followed by more unexpected oldies like ‘Available’ (with a bit of ‘Cardinal Song’ thrown in at the end) and ‘Daughters of the Soho Riots’ – it’s hard to figure out exactly why the band would have skimped on the old stuff the first night and delivered it en masse on the second, but there were certainly no complaints. Again, the band displayed their remarkable sense of humour when the intro of ‘Sorrow’ went on a tad too long as Berninger popped out for a toilet break, returning to the stage via a barrel roll. It sounds bizarre to hear laughter at a National show but there was plenty of it, cementing the fact that The National is a great act of entertainment as well as a source of personal affirmation. Closing again with ‘England’ (during which Berninger hopped into the crowd for a bit) and ‘Fake Empire’, the band encored first with another oldie, ‘Lucky You’, which provided a pleasant change in pace. During ‘Mr November’, Berninger again jumped down into the crowd, this time combing the right side of the front floor before leaping manically up onto the stage again – and during ‘Terrible Love’, he stayed put firmly on stage. The only criticism to be made of this night is that the same intense closeness felt during ‘Terrible Love’ on the first night – the use of direct audience interaction as a highly personal and highly emotional tool – was nowhere to be found on the second, with Berninger instead doing what every other frontman of every other rock band has done by crowdsurfing just for the sake of it. Closing again with the unplugged ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’, there was nobody in the room not singing along with unrestrained joy. And if there was, that person has no soul.

Set:
Runaway
Anyone’s Ghost
Brainy
Slow Show
Squalor Victoria
Afraid Of Everyone
Bloodbuzz Ohio
Little Faith
All The Wine
Available/Cardinal Song
Conversation 16
Sorrow
Abel
Apartment Story
Daughters Of The Soho Riots
England
Fake Empire
—
Lucky You
Mr. November
Terrible Love
Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks

The reason it took me this long to write about these shows is not only the fact that I’m a terribly lazy procrastinator, but also that it’s quite difficult to articulate the feelings I had during evenings that were so emotionally rewarding for me. It’s hard to talk about these things without pulling out every cliche in the book, but just as High Violet changed a little part of me, so did seeing The National live. It was an incredibly cathartic experience that is a shining example of the power of live music and what it can do for the average person. How the hell is anything else this year going to come even close?