Monday 16 August 2010
Polaris ’10 Shortlist: Owen Pallett Heartland
About a month ago I wrote that Heartland was the Polaris shortlisted album I was most looking forward to revisiting for this series. Now that its time is upon me, its also the one I’ve had the hardest time distilling. It arrived at the dawn of 2010, like a beacon signaling how stellar the year in Canadian music was going to be, and true to form, it’s being referred to in various circles as a clear contender for album of the year. How it fairs when it comes down to the Polaris race might be another matter all together.
Heartland‘s place among the 2010 shortlist isn’t unique. Like Dan Snaith’s Caribou, Owen Pallett is a former Polaris winner (he took home the inaugural prize under his previous incarnation as Final Fantasy for He Poos Clouds). If one were to put Pallett’s two albums side-by-side for comparison, Heartland is the superior disc hands-down, so it stands to reason that if He Poos Clouds was worthy, this one by rights should be more so. That’s a fine argument to make if we’re comparing Pallett records to Final Fantasy records, but the thing about Polaris is that each year the crop changes. Some artists may find themselves in the running over and over again, but they’ll always be up against a different crop of musicians and very different records. Interestingly enough, Pallett is once again up against Broken Social Scene for albums that followed their previous Polaris nominated discs, but otherwise, 2010 is definitely not 2006. It’s also the first time that two previous winners have found themselves nominated to the short list, so that adds another layer to the competition as well. Ultimately it’s up to the grand jury to decide if Polaris politics hinder or help Pallett’s chances of becoming the award’s first time repeat winner (as per my previous post regarding Caribou’s repeat chances). NOt that I would advocate allowing these discussions to colour the jury’s decisions. Polaris is all about the art of making a record, and not the politics of awarding prizes.
Based purely on artistic merit, there isn’t an album on the shortlist that compares to Heartland‘s conceptual scope. You can’t discuss the record without sounding like you’re talking about a novel. Heartland‘s protagonist, a farmer named Lewis from the land of Spectrum, is “ultra-violent” and at the beck and call of a deity named Owen. Lewis leaves his family, rides a horse named Imelda up the side of the fictional Mount Alpetine, takes off his shirt, and takes action, driving an iron spike into the eyes of his creator. Lyrically speaking, Heartland is untouchable. It calls into question faith and devotion, asking to what extent any of us would go to demonstrate either. It does so not by preaching, but through stylized, confessional storytelling. Pallett has said it’s a record about himself, and through him, we the audience can see aspects of ourselves in his creation if we look deep enough.
For those content to settle on the surface, Heartland provides us a musical landscape that’s rarely heard in modern pop music. The orchestrations and string work on songs like “E For Estranged” shouldn’t work as magically as they do juxtaposed with more pop-influenced compositions like “Lewis Takes Off His Shirt”, but this is not an album that plays by the rules. In creating his own mythical world, Pallett’s moved beyond realities’ borders. You could say that “He’s the god of Spectrum, for Owen’s sake, so what he says goes.” It is a labour of love that could have crashed and burned under the sheer weight of itself, but Pallett is nothing if not a dedicated and committed creator. He has seen his opus through from a radical idea to a stunning finished product.
Last week, I made the mistake of throwing my two-cent prediction in about how Dan Mangan would fair on September 20, and was duly chastised for it. I won’t make that mistake again. If I’ve learned anything from observing Polaris these last five years, it’s that all bets are off when it comes down to picking the winner. But as I prepare to leave the world of Spectrum on Radio Radio’s Acadian hip-hop express, I will say this: grand jury members be prepared, for farmer Lewis isn’t going to let Heartland go down without a fight on Polaris Gala night.
Heartland was released January 12, 2010 by For Great Justice Records.
MP3: Owen Pallett “Lewis Takes Action”
Myspace: Owen Pallett
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This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 8:35 am and is filed under MP3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Austra
