Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not for everyone, but for the few - Amazing, May 9, 2006
Truly, a very select audience can appreciate the genius of Owen Pallet's Final Fantasy. To be honest, I had never heard of him or his group when I went to see the Arcade Fire in concert about a year ago (he opened for them, solo act). His performance was impressive to say the least. Soon after, I found myself exploring his work. "Has A Good Home" is no easy listen. You will never find a track on the Billboard top 40 or whatever. Owen's radiounfriendly music is a true treat to those who appreciate complex arrangements hidden in deceitfully simple melodies. If you like indie music, if you like art music, this is my Best Album of the Year for 2005. I couldn't recommend higher. Give it a few spins, hate it after one listen, love it by the fifth go round.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I wish for you, December 1, 2006
Final Fantasy is one of those bands that require your heart and brain to be in it, not just your ears.
Owen Pallet's one-man band is an exquisite example of intelligent music -- classical violins playing experimental indiepop. And his debut album "Has A Good Home" is like a fragile glass ornament spun out of music, with wildly varying styles and sensitive, bittersweet lyrics.
It opens with a smooth string introduction, joined in by Pallett's melancholy vocals. He sings of a dying rich man, who vows that "None of you will ever see a penny/Of my ill-begotten wealth." But it isn't malicious -- he wishes "a lifetime of labour" on his children, because "hard days make peaceful nights."
You'd think all the songs would be like that. But it's wrong. With the very next song (a tribute to Arcade Fire's Win and Regina), he weaves electronic edges to his quirky violin plucking.
And in the songs that follow, Pallett tries out a variety of styles. Each one has the violin winding through each one like a silken cord, no matter how odd the style is -- string folk, tight indiepop, classical glitchpop, angelic ballads, dancey pop, medieval-sounding songs, and ominous little ditties that shiver through to the end.
But the album reaches its peak with "Chronicles of Sarnia," a shimmering ballad with heartbreaking lyrics: "I had to hide myself in a book/To keep your love away.... Midwinter Banquet, he shook his head/"Sadly, no,/I can reverse the river's flow,/but I can never send you home."
A lot of indie bands include strings in their music, usually woven in with other instruments, but very few have the guts to feature an indiepop song that is backed almost entirely by violin. So "Has a Good Home" ends up sounding wholly unique, polished and accomplished.
And the classically-trained Pallett knows how to use his violin: it shivers, shimmers, wobbles, twangs, swoops and swells, and sweeps out the music into bittersweet grandeur. In fact, his quiet instrumentation would be glorious even if it weren't backed by little horns and weavings of synth. Those are just the icing on the proverbial cake.
The finishing touch is Pallett himself -- his smooth, mournful voice croons through the songs almost conversationally. And his songs have the inscrutable quality of poetry -- he tackles adventure-lust, Canada, Yukio Mishima, and deep heartbreak: "Took you two years to win my heart/then two words to break it/every song from a heart this mangled/will be draped in strings, strings, strings."
"Has A Good Home" is an exquisite debut album, and only served as the warm-up to Final Fantasy's even better second album. Deserves to be a classic.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb!, August 8, 2008
A wonderful and creative album. Not only a new and unique style and sound, but the songs are also written quite well and not just different to be different. The kind of CD you could put on repeat all day at work or leave in the car for a month.
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