Final Fantasy
Interview by Cameron Cook
Photography by Jay Chen

The first time I encountered the genius of Owen Pallett-the one-man songwriting force behind the pop-classical outfit Final Fantasy-a friend had enticed me into seeing the Arcade Fire for the umpteenth time, and Owen, while playing violin for the 'Fire, was also providing the opening act. As soon as he took the stage, alone with his violin and loop pedals, an air of quiet majesty came down upon Webster Hall (if you can imagine such a thing), and every single person there became instantly caught up in the revelry of Final Fantasy's aura: one of magic, folklore, and marvel. I remember rushing down to the merch table directly afterwards and picking up Final Fantasy... Has a Good Home, in a cute little hand-folded cardboard sleeve, and listening to it compulsively for weeks. It was one of those albums that, as cheesy as it sounds, becomes like a friend, something to look forward to seeing again, enjoy spending time with.

This summer Owen released the follow-up to ...Has a Good Home, the equally awesome He Poos Clouds (more on the title in the interview). The album is rife with the same imagery that has always made FF appealing, while the instrumentation is more adventurous, seeing drums, pianos and string quartets join Owen's once-solitary violin. Scenes of a girl "wishing she were able/to behead herself at the dining room table" and mystical agendas such as "Find and kill my shadow self/and dig up every secret seashell" propel the record into a realm in which music isn't just to listen or dance to, but a sort of journal, simultaneously combining hope and despair until the last page turns and a new story begins.

How did you come up with the idea to start Final Fantasy, since you are or were a part of all these other bands, like Les Mouches, the Hidden Cameras, the Arcade Fire...?
Well, Final Fantasy came out of no particular situation. I wasn't playing with all that many bands, just looking for some money. I started playing music just by myself, and it was poppier than the stuff I was making with Les Mouches at the time. Not only that, but Les Mouches was costing a lot of money, recording and stuff like that.

Since it's just your voice and a violin, and no other accompaniment, it would seem like it was a very personal project. Not like, 'Let's start a band' or whatever.
Well, the first show I played I only played two songs. It wasn't a fully-realized project for a long time. It took time to be like, 'Oh, this is what the album is going to sound like.' It sort of grew into what it is now. The whole Arcade Fire situation happened much later. I was recording on Funeral at the time I as playing the first Final Fantasy shows, but there was no alliance made as yet, apart from shows we played [together].

Did you ever have any reservations about playing live? Your performances seem so sparse and special. The first time I saw you was when you opened for the Arcade Fire at Webster Hall in New York, and none of my friends had heard of you before, and we were all completely flabbergasted and blown away, because it looks so complicated.
It's one of those things that's going to lose its novelty over time [laughs].

Do you really feel that way?
Yeah, I think so. I've done a lot of live shows with a looper, and I'm trying to mix it up a bit. I'm going to have a string trio with me and do some looping with them. Some harpsichord songs. It's all depending on the budget. But yeah, I have feeling that it's going to lose its appeal over time. I'm doing my best.

It doesn't feel like a trick or a gimmick though. I mean, I guess it could get kind of constrained at one point, that maybe you'd want to expand on it. But within itself, it doesn't feel like it would lose its flavor.
Well we'll see. You only saw me play for 20 minutes. After an hour I can tell you that this shit gets petty tired [laughs].

I want to talk a little bit about the new songs. I have couple of new ones from a bootleg, with a couple of more string accompaniments. When is the new album coming out? Is it still called He Poos Clouds?
The new album is coming out in May. It's called He Poos Clouds, it's 10 tracks long. Eight of the songs are directly relating to the school of magic according to Dungeons and Dragons. You know, Harry Potter has its own sort of set of magical ideas, and every role-playing game has different ways that they classify their magic. But Dungeons and Dragons has a really sort of abstract, nice one that I find pleasing. It started with a song I wrote that was specifically about divination. Then it blossomed into eight songs about magic. Then the other two sort of tie the whole thing together, like an interlude and epilogue to the rest of the album.
Could I ask why it's called He Poos Clouds?
That's the name of one of the songs. It's suggesting of something really ridiculous. Also, you have to understand, this whole Final Fantasy project, from a songwriting point of view, is meant to be more devotional, romantic songs. I'm typically not a very romantic sort of guy, so it's kind of a bit of an experiment in that regard. Les Mouches' songs, we all basically conversations I put into music.

Most of the FF songs I'm familiar with are mostly depressing, about death and ghosts. It doesn't seem like a very romantic setting.
Well, I think that death and ghosts are very romantic things. Death is a pretty scary prospect for most non-believers to have to deal with. I can think of no other thing that people have tried to romanticize more than death. Most people spend their daily lives romanticizing about it. Ghosts are just an extension of that, really.

That's true. I also wanted to ask you about the cover songs you perform live. They're really good, because it's not just doing a cover song, its rearranging it for this one sort of unique instrument. How do you choose what songs to cover?
I have a good answer for that, and no one's asked me that question before. I choose cover songs because I feel that one of the drawbacks, and maybe the only drawback, of having increased Internet presence, is that there's everything to know about all kinds of music all the time. Everybody has their own top 50 lists. As a result, music has become a bit of a meritocracy. Why is Sufjan Steven's album, for example, on top of everyone's top 50 lists? I get nothing from that album. But when you listen to it in the context of every other record, it sounds awesome. Listened to by itself, it has nothing. I try to pick cover songs by artists that have moments or elements of their songwriting that transcend that meritocracy. Sometimes it's mainstream bands like Mariah Carey or Bloc Party, but most of time it's stuff like Xiu Xiu. Right now I'm really, really looking into a lot of Buffy St. Marie. I love Buffy St. Marie. Nobody likes Buffy St. Marie. From an anthropological sort of perspective, it's really amazing to hear somebody singing so strongly and stridently about stuff that she believes in. Same thing with Diamanda Gal?°s is a way. That's why she's so powerful. What she's doing may not be very appealing to your ears, but you know that she believes in it 100%.

I know what you mean. It's so raw, but she's so into it, you can only go with the flow.
I think it's difficult for women especially, you know? Men are the people who review CDs, most of the time. I don't know if Sasha Frere-Jones is a guy or a girl, but I assume it's a guy. You don't get a lot of women reviewing music. As a result, you get a lot of men who really love it when girls are kind of complacent. A really good example is Alanis Morrissette. She's fucking amazing, or used to be fucking amazing. When people like Warner just conform to what they expect of her-it's way more difficult for women to come out of left field and do something off the beaten track, because there's a bunch of male music critics out there who aren't prepared to accept that women have brains and voices.

I agree, to a certain extent. The only person who comes to mind in the last few years would be Johanna Newsome, who got the indie critical acclaim and is sort of out there.
Or think of Josephine Foster, I don't know if you've ever heard her?

I don't think so.
Josephine Foster was the frontwoman for a band called Born Heller, and she released another record called Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You, which was surprisingly on the top of some folk list in the NME. When people hear music from a girl doing something extreme, they're like: 'Oh, she's weird, she's crazy.' Cat Power is the best example. Totally sucky musician, but people love her because she's such a cute little character. 'She's falling around onstage, and it's so horrible and we all want to hurt her.' Her songs are lousy and her albums are atrocious. Moonpix is really good, but other than that, she's just fucking awful. Then you have someone like Johanna Newsome, where half the world recognizes that she's a total genius, and the other half is like: 'Oh, she's so annoying and twee and affected.' It's like, no, you know what's annoying and twee and affected? Britpop! That's annoying and twee and affected! But it's OK, they're men, they must know what they're doing!

It's true, there are very few women in the music industry as a whole. Music is so universal and ethereal and global, it's strange that it would be driven by guys.
The problem doesn't lie in the industry. The problem-or sorry, not the problem, the problem is universal, yes-but the solution lies in the artist more than anything. We don't need more female music critics, we need more women, period. Honestly, you know what I want? I want a female (Smog). I want to see a girl who has the balls to get up, without really knowing how to play an instrument, and play these half-assed songs, that are very, very, very true. We need a female Bob Dylan, you know what I'm saying? We need more women who don't feel the need to prove themselves, and instead are content to be universal truths. It's something I get into fights a lot about with friends [laughs]. A girlfriend will be like: 'Oh, I'm singing jazz standards, do you want to come?' And I'm like: 'No, I don't.' Like, come on. How many times have you met a guy who's really serious about singing jazz standards? Girls get really excited about singing other people's songs. There's this one singer in Toronto called Amy Bowles, and she's in a band called Pony Da Look. She's, I think, the most brilliant female lyricist in the world. And, I use the qualification "female", but she's one of the most brilliant lyricists in the world. The fact that she's a women makes me all the more pleased that she's really going out on a limb and writing incredibly bizarre songs that have a lot of resonance.

When I first heard the cover songs, more specifically the Mariah Carey and the Bloc Party covers ("Fantasy" and "This Modern Love" respectively, check them out on a p2p server near you, kids ‚ÄìEd.), what struck me is that most bands that would cover a sort of mainstream song, would do it in an ironic, hee-hee-this-is-funny way. Like a few years ago when all of these indie bands were covering Top 40 R&B songs, like Beyonc?© or OutKast or whatever. Personally, I love a cover song that's sincere. You're taking someone's song and making it your own, with your voice and your instrumentation, but initially you connected with this song for whatever reason.
I heard this recording of Ben Gibbard covering Avril Lavigne, and the whole time he's like: 'No guys, shut up, this is serious. Really, this is serious.' And he's cracking a smile the whole way through. It's like, 'no Ben, try harder'. If you think this is a good song then I want to believe you. I don't like irony in music. Or, if you're going to be ironic, you have to be like Art Brut. They're very well thought-out and are ironic from start to finish.

Yeah, go the whole nine yards. Anyway, what's your gameplan if you ever get sued by SquareSoft?
Um, I don't have a gameplan. I don't think anyone would ever think suing me would be a good idea. If they did then I'd just change the name. I'll change it to DragonQuest [laughs].

Just keep going through the whole gamut of video game names. Lastly, earlier you were talking about the meritocracy of end-of-year Top 10 lists. What would you think if I told you that my #1 record of 2005 was Final Fantasy Has a Good Home?
Well, I'd say that you're a masochist. Or I'd say that you're just trying to make my cold day much nicer.