Video: Studio 360: Owen Pallett performs "Lewis Takes Action"

It is nothing short of astounding that Pallett's music never comes off as particularly precious, humorless or impenetrable, despite trappings that would seem to guarantee all of the above. "This place is a narrative mess", Owen Pallett warns us early on in the proceedings of Heartland, his seemingly forever-in-the-works third full-length album. Call it a pre-emptive strike against listeners hoping to map an easy path through the murky thicket of the album's ostensible plot, billed as a heated one-sided dialogue between Lewis, an "ultra-violent young farmer" in the mythical land of Spectrum and the story's godlike creator, named, likely [...]

I may be obsessing over Heartland a little, but it's all I'm listening to at the moment - when I'm not working on this mammoth songs-of-the-decade list. That'll be here soon, and then we'll get back to normal, non-list-based writing.

Owen Pallett is no longer Final Fantasy, but he does have an album out under his own name, titled Heartland . Potential litigation threatened Pallett's use of the name, but he has carried on with his music unabated— Heartland is the most grandiose realization of his vision to date. He dropped by WNYC to promote the record recently, and on the clip above he performs "Lewis Takes Action" from the album on the Studio 360 show. Heartland is full of lush symphonic backing, but here Pallett goes it [...]