Owen Pallett

Owen Pallett, a Toronto native, works across multiple roles as singer, composer, violinist, producer, and arranger. He first appeared in the local indie scene in 2002 through membership in the Hidden Cameras and the trio Les Mouches, after which he formed working relationships with numerous independent acts such as Jim Guthrie, the National, and Arcade Fire. Throughout the middle years of the decade he performed in assorted string ensembles on tour while simultaneously creating orchestral parts for Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Neon Bible, and The Suburbs as well as projects by Fucked Up, Beirut, and the Last Shadow Puppets. Between 2005 and 2009 he issued two recordings under the Final Fantasy alias—Has a Good Home in 2005 and He Poos Clouds in 2006—the latter receiving Canada’s first Polaris Prize. Following four years devoted to writing, arranging, and session contributions for many other performers, he issued Heartland under his own name in 2010. In 2013 he joined Arcade Fire to compose and record the score for director Spike Jonze’s sci-fi romance Her. Domino released In Conflict in 2014, after which five further years of commissions, studio work, composing, and arranging included projects with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Titus Andronicus; he resumed his own catalog with Island in 2021.

Born Michael James Owen Pallett-Plowright in Mississauga, Ontario, he started violin lessons at age three. Ten years later, while absorbing the music of Bela Bartok and Dmitri Shostakovich, he began scoring one of his brother’s video games. During high school he completed his first opera and maintained a steady presence in varied musical environments, whether local bands, classical groups, or solo violin performances.

At the University of Toronto he earned a bachelor’s degree in music composition. He entered the Hidden Cameras in 2002 and performed with several additional ensembles. From 2004 to 2005 he served as programmer and violinist for Stuart McLean’s “The Vinyl Café” on CBC. In homage to the Japanese game series he adopted Final Fantasy as his stage name and cultivated a hybrid style of avant-garde and orchestral pop while building a live reputation for spontaneity and concentrated intensity. Although he remained the preferred violinist for Arcade Fire and numerous peers and continued remixing tracks, his central commitment stayed with his own projects. Has a Good Home, issued under the Final Fantasy name in 2005, attracted favorable notice worldwide, and He Poos Clouds captured the inaugural Polaris Prize as the outstanding Canadian album of 2006.

In 2009, to avoid potential trademark conflict with Square Enix, the company behind the Final Fantasy video-game franchise, Pallett declared he would retire the pseudonym. Heartland appeared the following year on his own behalf. Recorded in Reykjavik, Iceland, mixed in New York by Rusty Santos (Animal Collective, Panda Bear), the album earned a second Polaris nomination; three months afterward came the EP A Swedish Love Story.

Pallett and Arcade Fire were asked in 2013 to score and record the soundtrack for writer/director Spike Jonze’s “sci-fi romance” Her. Although first pressed in a severely limited vinyl edition, the recording received broad distribution nearly ten years later.

After completing touring obligations with Arcade Fire, Pallett delivered In Conflict on Domino in 2014, featuring contributions from Brian Eno. Once the ensuing world tour concluded he returned to an active studio calendar that encompassed Jennifer Castle’s Pink City in 2014, the Last Shadow Puppets’ Everything You’ve Come to Expect in 2015, and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Rest in 2016, among many others. In 2017 he supplied arrangements, strings, and piano to Arcade Fire’s Everything Now, and two years later he produced and performed on the Mountain Goats’ double album In League with Dragons.

Island reached listeners digitally in May 2020. The largely acoustic, live-in-studio collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra at Abbey Road formed a meticulously planned song cycle whose central figure, “Lewis,” returned from Heartland—a “young, ultra-violent farmer” inhabiting the fictional fourteenth-century realm of Spectrum. The narrative revolved around the character’s unexplained fury toward a deity named “Owen Pallett.” Physical copies appeared in February 2021, followed in May by the wider availability of the Arcade Fire/Pallett soundtrack for Her.