Analogue: That was some reaction you got tonight at Electric Picnic, How do your Irish fans compare to those elsewhere?
Owen Pallett: I don’t know, I find that there’s like weird pockets of acceptance of Final Fantasy, like Austria, Ireland, Portugal, that’s about it! San Francisco, other than that it’s pretty spare.

A: You seemed a bit humbled on stage by the crowd going crazy

FF: It’s nice you know. I didn’t really know how to react, you know, I’m just so used to coming out on stage and playing shows to passive people. It’s kind of really nice to play for a bunch of people who are like just a little more, paying attention I guess.

A: For people who wouldn’t be familiar with you, could you tell me a bit about how you started to perform under the name of Final Fantasy in Toronto all those years back?

FF: Sure, I was just kind of was playing with other bands and I had friends who were doing the thing, doing guitar looping and voice looping and stuff like that in Toronto. And I rented a pedal and then I played, I played my first show playing a benefit for Bobby Cremen, he’s a musician on Red State Records. After the very first show where I only played 4 songs, 2 of which were covers, people were really enthusiastic and encouraged me to keep going with it, so I kept going. I spent that entire summer, which was the summer of 2004, just like practicing in my basement.

A: Well that kind of leads on this, playing live you use a lot of sampling and looping. When you first plugged a violin into a foot peddle, what was your initial reaction when you tried it out?

FF: Well it was really hard, I’d never tried singing and playing at the same time before because that’s not typically something that violinists are able to do, it takes like I don’t know, it’s really hard. You’ve got a violin pressing up against your throat and it’s tricky, it took me forever to kind of get it. So honestly the first year was so unglamorous (laughs), it was just practicing and you know working away.

A: You seem very comfortable with it now. It’s almost like an aside. Just thinking about it, you layer four or five different pieces together in one song and one is always leading on to the next. On stage do you sometimes go “hang on, where do I go next?”

FF: Yeah, no. I make a lot of mistakes. (laughs) I’m lucky if I get through the show without any mistakes.

A: Just have to hope that the fans are accepting…?

FF: Well I found that actually mistakes kind of make a show better too. You know, like you make a mistake and the crowd is just kind of like ha ha ha.

A: At times you have a lot of fun with journalists claiming that you’ve never even played the game Final Fantasy. When you first picked the name, did you ever really imagine it sticking for this length?

FF: No. You know when bands pick their names, it’s not like they’re immediately on a stage in front of people and they have to stand by the name they picked. I’m really happy with the name personally. I think it was a good choice but no I never played with a journalist or anything like that, it’s usually miscommunication or something like that. I’m definitely not a big fan of the game. I haven’t really played them since I was a teenager. At the time, I was really seeing like, starting to notice how kind of like Final Fantasy the games themselves were like symptomatic and very indicative of sort of post war current super flat movements in Japanese culture. I kind of got interested in the connection between the two. So initially Final Fantasy was really kind of like meant to be inspired by that super flat idea that Satoshi Kon and stuff like that. I still think it is in a way, if I need ideas I usually just watch some anime. (Laughs)

A: For your last album, He Poos Clouds, it’s a concept album of sorts, how did you come to decide on intertwining the eight schools of magic from Dungeons and Dragons with very modern themes of relationships and love?

FF: Oh it was just like, I lived in this house and we were just dudes, we had very really exciting mornings where we would cook elaborate breakfasts, you know, it just kind of came from one those

A: From shooting the breeze…

FF: Yeah, a lot of tea one morning and caffeine induced sort of like “Hey, that’s a great idea!”. So I think the first song I wrote ‘Many lives – 49 mp’ and that was the first song I wrote for the record when I was like I’m going to write a song about the school of divination and I decided I was going to flesh out seven more songs for the other eight schools of magic.

A: Did you find it tough to get to the last two or three?

FF: Yeah it was actually really hard. I mean for the longest time I was just referring to the songs by the school of magic and really working to try to figure out ways of lyrically and grammatically connecting the music to the school. Some of it was successful. I don’t know. A lot of people are just like ‘I don’t get it’ so I guess I was a bit of a failure but I did my best.

A: One of your songs deals with necromancy and your godfather’s death. In previous interviews you’ve mentioned that as an atheist that forced you to deal with your own mortality. Was that a major influence on the album?

FF: It was in a way. It was mostly an influence on that song. It wasn’t so much dealing with my own mortality but dealing with the realities of being an atheist because I’d been a long term atheist and had really negative feelings about any sort of belief in a higher power and my godfather was also a similar such individual. It wasn’t actually my godfather; it was my brother’s godfather. My godfather died when I was ten but my brother’s godfather was a very close part of the family. So just seeing him, because he was on a great deal of morphine, he had suffered a stroke and as a result of the stroke his intestines had exploded. So there was just like shit all over his abdomen internally and he was going to die so they just put him on a lot of morphine. You know, we just stood by his bed as he kind of lapsed in and out of consciousness. It was just kind of amazing to see him come out of unconsciousness and gasp for air. The look in his eyes was just one of ‘How do I really deal with this idea?’, that death was not a peaceful thing. At the time too, I was dealing with a friend who was a homo, he was having a romantic relationship with somebody who was HIV positive and he was romanticising about this notion of being with somebody. He describes the activities that they indulged in as feeling much more meaningful and real. At the time I kind of felt that that was kind of fucked.

But I couldn’t really put my finger on it. Seeing my brother’s godfather suffering this right in front of me. It really made me realize that the whole concept of death and sickness and suicide especially, has permeated our culture and it’s really kind of like disgusting. I found myself really unable to cope listening to the music and seeing the art of people who had committed suicide. It really colours the works of people like Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith or Ian Curtis.

A: Well there’s still a question mark hanging over Jeff Buckley’s death.

FF: I know but pretty much everybody except his mother just like assumes that it’s suicide. So scratch Jeff Buckley but I mean it kind of adds weight to people’s art that it is kind of sick. It’s sick, it’s fucked.

Well I’m not saying that Ian Curtis’ suicide is going to drive other people to suicide but I do feel like it would create in turn bad art. You know, people who are influenced by this idea, by this mentality. You might notice that on my records that I’m dying a lot, in a lot of songs. A lot of songs have me dying and I’m kind of trying to address them with tongue in cheek. Kind of really looking at them from a perspective of someone who actually genuinely doesn’t want to die and is really afraid of it.

I mean I think the best example, one of my favourite musicians and lyricists is Ozzy Osbourne when he was with Black Sabbath because despite the fact that you know a lot of people were really getting excited about his concept of Satanism and the things he was singing about. When you listen, he was genuinely scared, really afraid of what’s happening in what he’s singing about. That’s something I really identify with. I kind of try to draw from it for my own music.

A: I don’t know how to really follow on from that! There is a lot of different themes that run through your songs like relationships is a really strong point like in ‘Please Please Please’, what were you thinking about the time when you wrote ‘Please Please Please’?

FF: Oh I don’t know, ‘Please Please Please’ is really just like an attempt to describe my own sort of like sexual fascinations which were definitely not based on certain visual stimuli.. But I don’t know if I totally agree with the sentiment of that song anymore.

A: You’ve moved on a little bit…

FF: Yeah I guess so but at the time, really it was inspired by this overcoat that I wore because I had this great big blue cadets overcoat and I just thought it was the sexiest thing. And in turn it was just sort of like I could feel myself attracted to people who wore a lot of clothes. My friend Steve Kato, actually there was this party where we all got really wasted and we all started taking photos of each other in various states of undress and as people would take off more and more of their clothes, Steve would put on more clothes. He would just take the other people’s discarded clothing and just put it on. I thought it was so sexy!

A: So hot.

FF: Yeah it was really hot.

A: What was it like winning the inaugural Polaris Prize for He Poos Clouds? There was kind of a lot of uneven criticism and praise for that album. Was there justification in winning?

FF: Well I didn’t feel until I won it was unevenly praised. I felt as if the praise was generous. Honestly I felt as if it was really well received, that most people kind of liked it and I felt good about it. But I predicted whoever was going to win the award was going to be celebrated for a week and then derided for the rest of their life. I called it before and I never suspected that I was even in the running, like I was going to win. Generally my feeling towards that award is that I’m very supportive because Canadians tend to be very self deprecating and nobody has an ego in Canada, a lot of musicians don’t have any money so that sort of award is like a great institution for Canadian musicians but it’s fucked because all of a sudden and I kind of realize that all these musicians who were accustomed to working together and were friends with each other and like hang out together and have parties because Canada is kind of a small scene. Every band in Montreal hangs out with each other and Toronto and Vancouver and whatever. And all of a sudden to have your work be put in competition with your friend’s work, it’s like what are you getting? For winning this competition, you’re getting money from a corporation, from Rogers and you’re getting this critical esteem in the eyes of journalists. Essentially it’s kind of like taking away from the group of musicians who are really your backbone and instead giving you other things that are less important.

A: I don’t think there was any hard feeling there. Actually we met Malajube earlier on today and they were wondering what you spent the prize money on…?

FF: Oh I’ve talked about that a lot.

A: Ok well let’s not get into that.

FF: It’s ok. It’s cool.

A: Well they seemed very good humoured about it.

FF: Well that’s the thing, you feel like they should be or would be. Like why would I ever have bad like…I don’t know, I barely even know Malajube. I mean I feel like the first instance that we were introduced to each other was in a situation of competition. It’s fucked. It’s like even harder now with the second Polaris Prize you know because Arcade Fire are nominated and obviously I’ve a lot of personal investment in that album and my favourite albums tend not to be the Arcade Fire album rather like the Junior Boys album, The Besnard Lakes’ album, the Miracle of Fortress album but like it’s so fucked. It’s so fucked to have to think about these works which you love and kind of have to evaluate.

I have a real problem with Pitchfork.

A: Yeah?

FF: Well not a problem so much. I just kind of recognise that their process is actually inherently bad for musicians, to quantify works on ten point scale in any sort
regard whether it’s just like even a simple as a ‘buy it, don’t buy it’ sort of thing. Especially with the ten point scale and colouring all musicians with business dealings with a number that been ascribed to them. It makes it really kind of weird.

A: You don’t think it should be a rating system, it should just a commentary on the album as a review?

FF: Yeah absolutely, I feel that the rating system not only is derogatory towards the album itself but also towards the journalists who are writing about it because nobody gives a shit about Matt LeMay or Ryan Schreiber or Nitsuh is going to write. People are only interested in the number that’s awarded and I mean it’s happened. I mean my friend Alena for example met with a publicist in New York city and the very first thing the publicist asked her “so what did Pitchfork give your EP?” and she told her and she sighed and was like “I guess we can work together”. And it’s just that whole attitude.

A: One power holding all the cards.

FF: Yeah it’s really difficult and I mean I’m not going to deny that the music buying public does need representation and Pitchfork does sort of provide that on one end but I do feel that the ten point system is.. It’s just laughable. I don’t fucking know how anything about the Pitchfork writers, I don’t know how they write. I don’t read them, well I do read them but you know what I mean, it’s like after you’re done reading them what you’re left with is nothing. So back to Polaris, I just feel like it’s a very similar kind of effect.

A: One thing that kind of baffles me, is there something in the water in Canada? There’s so much great music coming out of it. You might of mentioned before in other interviews that no equivalent of pitchfork or NME in Canada to tie you down, is that freedom that gives the music room to breathe and progress? Or is it really just a great group of people who are trying to do something new?

FF: It depends from city to city, every city has it’s own scene. All the cities in Canada are so spread out, it’s not like the UK. There’s no particular one Canadian sound, you’ll hear people in Montreal talk about how a band sounds very Toronto and similarly people will hear a band that sounds like something that can only come from Montreal. There’s a lot of subtleties within it that you might not pick up on if you’re not from there. But in general I just think that Canada has a really high quality of living, people are able to live for fairly cheap, as a result people have a lot of time to not give a shit if they succeed or not; as a result, they kinda go out on a limb and try to create something great

A: You were a member of Picastro back in 2000 but left because you were busy with Final Fantasy. What was it like to work with them again on their latest album?

FF: It was cool. I didn’t work so much on Picastro’s latest record; I just kinda took them to a church and put down some organ. I played some stuff on it, but it wasn’t as intense a process. A lot of the songs in that record were ones that I would have played when I was in the band

A: Back to collaborations … You collaborated with Zach Condon of Beirut, adding vocals and strings to the song ‘Cliquot’ from his upcoming album ‘The Flying Club Cup’ … how did that come about

FF: It was actually kinda funny because I’m a fan of Beirut and I assume that he’s a Final Fantasy fan. Essentially, Patrick my boyfriend and Kristianna his girlfriend were huge fans of the other bands so we were urged to work together by our significant others. I had some open studio time coming up at the Arcade Fire studio, and I was interested in making a new recording, and recorded violin samples with a very sort of weird ballad sort of feel. At the time I was offering him to just come up and play the songs and record it all in one day, but by the time he got up there, he had mostly finished the new record, so it was mostly redesigning certain parts. But it was fine, it was excellent music to work with. He’s the best singer I know, and he’s changed the way I think about singing.

A: The next LP you release is to be ‘Heartland’. How did you come up with the name? Was there something about it being a reaction to how your last album was received?

FF: No, somebody said that, but that was just kind of a nice side-effect. No, the record is about patriotism. Essentially, the record takes place in a fictional country about a fealty towards it and a whole very sort of elaborate system of thought that’s related to how that whole world works. Whether or not that’s apparent in the music is irrelevant, cause I don’t want it to be a concept record, I just want it to be set in a fictional world, in the same way that a fantasy can be set in a fantasy world. Like when you watch Willow, you never question why there are Daikinis and Brownies, the Elowyn, you never question why there’s these people that are huge and then really small people, you just accept it … That’s kinda the idea for the record. So, the record is about patriotism; there’s the protagonist, and he calls his faith into question as his God starts to do horrible things.

A: Sounds interesting, have you any idea when that might come out?

FF: Next year, it’s a long way away from completion. I talked about it, and then people assumed that meant that it was coming out soon. Big mistake.

A: You’re a bit of a perfectionist though…

FF: Yeah, sure [laughs]. It’s not that though, it’s just that I haven’t any time. I’ve been touring for two years, I’ve been working on other people’s records… I just haven’t had any time.

A: In the future, how do you envisage Final Fantasy developing? Do you think you’ll be staying solo, or maybe grow into a band or an orchestra?

FF: No, I think I’ll keep it as a solo project. I’ve had a lot of musical aspirations over the last few years that I’ve wanted to fulfil. I had other bands that I wanted to pursue, guitar songs that I wanted to record, an opera I wanted to compose … I’m gonna try and pursue Final Fantasy, make a few more records, but I’m not gonna have a retrospective in twenty years, it’s probably gonna be done. I think there are much more important things that I can be doing in music, much more socially important…

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