Owen Pallett -- In Conflict

Just got my vinyl through the post. Domino did well getting it here on the day of release. It looks beautiful and is sounding fantastic. Have only listened to the NPR stream once, wanted to wait until I got my actual copy to hear it again.

the albums i associate most with it so far don't resemble it musically but maybe formally? so i get the tnp comparison. for instance, maybe because owen's been talking about tori a lot, i've been thinking of this record in conjunction with under the pink, this really expansive vision fit into these skewed pop songs. or shiina ringo's karuki samen no kuri hana which is a similar kind of interior pop with gorgeous diversions

shiina ringo comparison is crazily apt, great pick-up

solid nyt review today
i feel like this is the one that dude rides to HIPSTER STATUS and yay

And here's his fancy new site:

http://www.owenpalletteternal.com/

Apparently In Conflict is 50 minutes and 90 seconds long, lol

As I said elsewhere in strict resemblance terms the album I'm reminded of most is Coloma's Finery.

But I really feel Brad's Under The Pink comparison. "Pretty Good Year" totally fits the narrative except it's in second/third person rather than first. Also "The Riverbed" = "Cornflake Girl" / "The Passions" = "Icicle".

I'm only fairly familiar with Amos's work but for me I'm hearing a fair bit of Hounds of Love in here - especially in the way the string and orchestral arrangements meet with the synth-led stuff.

btw not that i necessarily need to compare owen's great, individual record to even more things but imo this year's analogue for this record is meshell ndegeocello's

"The Passions" is real nice

― macklin' rosie (crüt), Tuesday, May 27, 2014 12:05 PM (11 hours ago)

it's such a sad song, isn't it? I was at his Boston show, and he announced it as "a friendly reminder that death is hanging over us" or something to that effect. the lyrics aren't particularly depressing (bittersweet nostalgia + Smiths) but his delivery is so mournful that it's hard not to want to parse it for darker subtexts. it's chilling the way it glides so seamlessly from synth to string section and back again.

I wish one person would step into this thread and trash this album to dispel the appearance of sycophantism. this lovefest is really getting out of hand!

(but I think this album is great so idk)

my considered opinion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPcLaO4ey4g

haw

it's up on spotify, yay

i mean not yay for owen's wallet i guess but yay nonetheless

Both He Poos Clouds and Heartland made my year-end top 5, though the latter felt like a considerable step up in terms of craft. On first listen, In Conflict doesn't seem significantly more impressive to me, but it's obviously still great.

Can this stupid week (the one that, for me, ends this coming Tuesday) please be over so I can just spend some real time with this record?

after playing "The Riverbed" incessantly I kind of want to go through every other album in my record collection and replace the guitar with violin

feels like it would be most transformative on Ministry-influenced industrial metal

personalized listening: heard "I Am Not Afraid" line as "I haven't had a fuck in years"

but yes seems like a tour de force on first hearing

Gah now I wont not hear it that way, thanks Morbs ;P

http://thequietus.com/articles/15386-owen-pallett-favourite-albums

I went to buy this today at the record shop where I normally get sneered at (shut UP I do not buy that many cut-price I------- albums) and the clerk took it from me and said "Great choice! EXCELLENT album!" and now I'm wondering if Owen bribed them all to say that.

wanna hear that buffy sainte-marie album

and regret not having this album twenty-some years ago, that i might write alarmingly earnest letters to the Artist

i was thinking in the back of my mind that "i am not afraid" maybe had something to do with tg

but that's also my own association with the word "discipline"

Still listening to this album a lot, still think I prefer Heartland but I've lived with that record for four years now and there aren't many things in the world I'd rather listen to.

Will never not get goosebumps at:

"Your light is spent! Your light is spent!" I cried,
As I drove the iron spike into Owen's eyes.
The sun sped cross the plains like that cinematic moment where
Humanity and nature collide.
When you think, "Everything's gonna be all right,"
Just before the hero gets a bullet in his side.

^^lol I wrote almost an exact copy of this post yesterday right down to mentioning that particular verse, but I got distracted and forgot to press submit.

But yeah agreed - I said AOTY upthread and meant it, but I'm not sure if this is better than Heartland. idk I guess I prefer the Final Fantasy side more?

Heartland is an all-time favourite for me. So far, I have not really been able to connect with this in the same way, as far as my personal taste goes. I don't dislike it by any stretch: hooks get in my head; the skills are undeniable. Maybe it's just a matter of time. The three songs that were released ahead of time are still my favourites.

Very hard to compare them as I've listened to Heartland a lot since it came out and have only played In Conflict maybe five times now. My first impressions are there is nothing on In Conflict that I love as much as Lewis Takes Off His Shirt and Tryst With Mephistopheles but overall it's more consistently enjoyable album. Love that he's totally fulfilling all that promise that he showed on the Final Fantasy albums. They're both really good albums but what he's done since has been such a huge leap in, well everything really.

Very excited that he's coming to Minnesota in September. Haven't seen him since around He Poos Clouds.

My first impressions are there is nothing on In Conflict that I love as much as Lewis Takes Off His Shirt and Tryst With Mephistopheles but overall it's more consistently enjoyable album.

Those are the exact two songs that will probably keep Heartland firmly entrenched as my favourite Owen Pallett album. But if enough of In Conflict ends up growing on me to the degree that "The Riverbed" has...

Song for five and six is what's up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr_SbrFIuKA

my feeling as well

it's def in my top ten
this album has me listening to he poos clouds again (which is prob still my fave full length, dunno if that's nostalgia or what but there i am)

really loving this still

kinda wish the first album wasn't titled "he poos clouds" i woulda checked it earlier

i seem to recall his comment on that was that it was meant to be a compliment, like "she's so sweet, she shits whipped cream" but yeah, we've all gotten older and wiser

p sure i only checked out the first album because of the title

p sure this was the first album
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/67368688/Has+A+Good+Home+CA+HAGH.jpg

Yeah, I still really like "This Is the Dream of Win and Reg" and "That's When the Audience Died".

i love the floaty chorus of "the secret seven". and even though i think he's probably singing "watching kids turn into lovers/believers", i hold out hope that it's actually lovers/beliebers

Has a Home is all about An Arrow in the Side of Final Fantasy and The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead for me.

i think seeing final fantasy back in 2005 was what made me want to buy a loop pedal. it took me like eight years to actually get around to it.

i tried to be the sole antagonist in thread before but i can't keep it up, this album is an astonishing achievement. structurally maybe not too different from what he'd done before (and that i have no complaints about) but something about the knotting together of synths and acoustic instruments works unlike really anything else i can think of. at points it sounds like there's a modelling of the synths on the tendencies of stringed instruments, and a modelling of the stringed instruments on the tendencies of synths, and that slightly disorienting combination of sounds wheeling around each other is just perfect.

I dunno; maybe I'll be the lone dissenter. Like, I recognise this album as an astonishing achievement. But I've listened to it twice, and I don't know if I can listen to it again, because it makes me bawl like a baby every time I put it on. It's like it's too much, emotionally, and I'm too raw for this. Maybe I need to put it away for a year and come back to it when I'm in a better place emotionally, and just listen to meaningless shiny-metal-box music until then. It's an amazing album, yes, but when every single song feels like a dart aimed directly at your most vulnerable part, it can be difficult to listen to. This is probably my failing, not the album's. There's a time for catharsis and emotional vulnerability, and a time for just holding it together. I don't know that I can do this right now.

sounds like compliments of the highest order to me! :-)

i mean, if it wasn't so short it would be an emotionally difficult listen for even the most resilient person. listening to it the number of times i have, i've had to take a break cos much as it improves as a listening experience on consecutive goes, so too do the emotions get magnified and after a while i started feeling a bit traumatised.

I've listened maybe four times; nowhere near enough to take everything in yet, which is kind of how Heartland worked, too - I found myself just listening and listening over and over again, because it was musically and aesthetically just so NICE to listen to, before the emotional impact really hit home.

People get catharsis in different ways, I suppose; but this (with some exceptions; The Riverbed, perhaps) doesn't seem to have the same catharsis through emotional desperation of the Embrace record, or catharsis through voodoo repetition like the Swans record. Owen's music strokes my emotions rather than squeezing them or battering them.

One thing I wish he'd do is release more records, more often! He's SO GOOD AT MUSIC! It feels nuts that there've been 4 years each from HPC to H and from H to IC.

OP OTM

Here's my review of this record: http://thequietus.com/articles/15386-owen-pallett-favourite-albums I can honestly say I've never felt so humbled in reviewing a record as nothing I could write about it would do it fair justice. I've been in a kind of agonised turmoil since submitting my final draft a few days ago, especially in the light of several more plays and having read other people's reactions (tend to try and avoid reading others' opinions before writing, so it's interesting to hear these takes). Anyway, all in all, it's likely to be among my very favourite albums out this year.