Owen Pallett

After the Walkmen ended, I hurried across to catch Owen Pallett's set over at Sennheiser's green stage.  When I got there, he was about two songs in, and annoyed.  His vocals, or maybe his violin, kept feeding back in the monitors; so much that he finally told the soundman to cut them completely.  This might have been a workable situation for most performers, but Pallett's is a live looping show, building a wall of sound by playing over what he has just recorded.  Without monitors, he couldn't hear what he'd already played, which made it near-impossible to play over it tightly in one take.  I felt for the guy.

I remember getting his 2006 album He Poos Clouds not long after it came out, and being astonished that anyone (let alone any group) would attempt this sort of music live.  I've played classical violin since I was four, and that was the first time I'd heard classical licks, dynamics, and instrumentation put into a pop framework.   His latest, Heartland, is bigger and louder with synthesizers, guitar, and even a Jesus and Mary Chain-esque drumkit on a few tracks (added to the tympanis and suspended cymbals of the previous record).  And once again, it's as easy and as rewarding a listen as this sort of complex instrumentation has ever been.

Most of the songs Pallett played were from the new album, with a couple from an even newer record yet to be released.  I imagine he's not one to play the same songs over and over; of course, when you're essentially building the songs in front of people and it takes a minute before the verse can be in full swing, it would make anyone more self conscious about their song choices.  The great thing about this sort of approach is that he's painting a picture onstage instead of dragging on an old, dusty canvas.

The disadvantage is that without monitors, this way of playing is virtually impossible.  Pallett and his guitarist/percussionist exchanged wry glances throughout the set, and stage banter was curt.  "We're not really a festival band," he said, "I don't have a lot of 'he said blah, I said blah' stories."  Even if they didn't really seem to be enjoying their set, I sure did.  Somehow it was still together, tight; often completely different from the album version, but even more exciting for it.  I just laughed when he walked offstage with five or ten minutes left in the set.  Sure, they weren't a festival band, but for three quarters of an hour they had managed to make me forget I was at a festival.