Owen Pallett

★★★★ Island DOMINO. CD/DL/LP

Well-connected Canadian’s third long-player under his own name.

With a CV that features Arcade Fire (for whom he plays violins and arranges strings), R.E.M., Taylor Swift, Pet Shop Boys, Linkin Park and Robbie Williams, Owen Pallett also enjoys a lauded solo career, initially as Final Fantasy and, more recently, under his own name. Overflowing with ideas, Island is a near-concept album, which resurrects his characters Lewis (a selfdestructive farmer) and Owen (a god). Sometimes downbeat, sometimes expansive, but always acoustic,

Island veers between the lush, string-enhanced melancholia of pieces such as Perseverance Of The Saints and the more edgy, Scott Walker-esque fare in the vein of Lewis Gets Fucked Into Space. Everything comes together on the atypically frantic A Bloody Morning, which begins, “I started drinking on the job and the job became easy,” and, underpinned by typewriter percussion, dreamy choral vocals and the London Contemporary Orchestra, escalates into a sublime, noholds-barred stew.