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Fun Fun Fun Fest review: Final Fantasy
There’s something puzzling about one-person acts who name themselves as if they were a band, but singer/songwriter/violinst/keyboardist/sample-master Owen Pallett, aka Final Fantasy, is his own band. It was tiring just watching the Canadian — who has admitted that he doesn’t have the patience to play the game after which he has named himself — moving back and forth on stage, searching for the appropriate violin sample (he created some of the layers on stage during the songs, others appeared to be pre-arranged) and shuffling between the keys and the violin, singing all the while. At one point he admitted that taking the keyboard on tour was a pain and asked the crowd whether they thought it was worth having on stage.
The crowd was attentive as Pallett made his way through songs from 2005’s “Has a Good Home” and 2006’s “He Poos Clouds.” Pallett’s violin work is both haunting and playful, a good match for lyrics that juxtapose intense feelings of loneliness and isolation with amusing verses like “But - what if they like it/And lock us in a cannery with your accordian/Until we canned our love?” The sound was at times piercing, and some audience members were seen walking away from the stage holding their ears, although Pallett commented that he couldn’t hear anything on stage.
The closing song was a cover of Destroyer’s (aka New Pornographer Dan Bejar) “An Actor’s Revenge,” which he played twice, the second time with Bejar and rapper Cadence Weapon joining him on stage for a version that would have been at home at a Broadway after-party.
(Photo by David Weaver FOR AUSTIN360.)
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