"Normally I play for forty-five minutes, but tonight I've got no time limit." That was the first thing Owen Pallett said into the microphone. "I'm probably going to play for three hours."
To a fan of Owen's music, this was nirvana. Unfortunately, he gave the Echoplex only an hour-and-a-half, but the set was perfectly executed. With the extra amount of time he professed to have, Owen did a nice tour of his previous albums, hitting fan favorites like "The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead" and "This is the Dream of Win and Regime" whilst doing Heartland a good amount of justice.
The attention to detail and musical nuances that Pallett demonstrates in studio were replicated impressively, as was his foray into finger-picking a violin. His looping expertise was likewise clearly exhibited. I haven't been so dazzled with looping chops since seeing Andrew Bird solo. Someone should lock the two of them into a room until they completely innovate the medium.
After the set was over, Owen returned to the stage to play one final encore song. He claimed to be a bit delirious as he swigged from a bottle of Francis Ford Coppola (I wonder why...), and started playing some extremely funky electronica beats. The crowd was a bit miffed as electronica typically isn't in Owen's musical vocabulary, but once he started playing the violin, it became clear that he was covering "Odessa" by Caribou. In some ways, it felt like deja vu, because I had just seen Caribou two weeks before at the Music Box. Even so, Owen did a superb rendition, breathing some interesting texture into a song you never thought would be suited for a violin.
Overall, Owen showed a mastery of his music and definitely reminded the crowd of some two hundred fans that the violin is an instrument to surely be reckoned with.
