Photos by Peter Juhl

Unlike fellow Toronto-raised musician Drake, interviews are not like confessions for Oscar-nominated arranger/composer/conductor/songwriter/compulsive violin looper Owen Pallett. Instead, they are spirited debates with lofty goals in mind: The 34-year-old is adamant that he'll "do anything within my power as a gay, white, Canadian male to assist in improving the relationship between creatives and consumers.” This diplomacy appears to have carried over to his latest baroque art-pop album, In Conflict, which replaces the sci-fi and RPG-based subject matter of his previous work with what sounds like more autobiographical themes. But when I ask him if he has role models in terms of confessional songwriting, he snaps back: “I have a problem with your choice of the word 'confessional.’” Considering the new record's title, I guess I should expect the occasional counterpunch. 

It’s not the process of self-disclosure he finds issue with, though; Pallett cites early Tori Amos as a major influence on the often brutally candid, first-person narratives of In Conflict, which leads him to clarify, “I hate the word ‘confessional’ or ‘cathartic.’ I think those terms are vaguely misogynistic and always applied to female songwriters. And it's like, 'Well, what do men do? Do they have something they need to get off their chest?'”

Still, Pallett claims In Conflict is no more personal than his previous records, one of which was called He Poos Clouds (under his former moniker Final Fantasy) and included songs inspired by Dungeon & Dragons, The Legend of Zelda, and The Chronicles of Narnia. And then there was 2010’s Heartland, which told the story of an “ultra-violent farmer” named Lewis and his creator named Owen, all of it taking place in an imaginary realm called Spectrum. Even so, he holds firm. “The only real difference between this and the other records is I don't die at the end," he says. (He prefers not to discuss the details of his lyrics because "that’s kind of like talking about the color of my crap.")

In the four years since Heartland, he's continued his work as Arcade Fire's longtime string arranger (Pallett's 2005 debut Has a Good Home features a track called “This Is the Dream of Win & Regine”) and has offered his talents to obvious indie A-listers (the National, Grizzly Bear, Beirut), Hollywood visionaries (he created the soundtrack for Spike Jonze’s Her with Arcade Fire), and Billboard heavies (he arranged strings on Taylor Swift's Red track "The Last Time" and Linkin Park's "I'll Be Gone", from their 2012 LP Living Things).

That said, when I call him, he's mostly interested in killing time until “his band” (which includes members of Arcade Fire, who he will be soon joining for an upcoming tour) arrives at his Montreal home to indulge in the meal he’s been preparing for the past few hours. “I have a really good dal that that just needs to be heated up, and a leek and mushroom soup," he says. "I’m making some eggplant salad, and there’s also red peppers too.” Listen to his work or watch Pallett perform live—micromanaging his violin and vocals through a battery of looping pedals—and this kind of grand spread doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

Pitchfork: After the fantastical constructs of the past two albums, did you feel like you had to go in an opposite direction? 

Owen Pallett: I started writing in late 2009, when I was on tour with the Mountain Goats—it was crazy to see how quickly John [Darnielle] was able to transform run-of-the-mill, weird events that just happened in his life [into songs]. The best example I can think of is we were walking down Hollywood Boulevard and we come across Liza Minnelli's star, and he was like, "Oh, get a picture with me on this thing!" Four months later, I'm visiting him, and he played me this song that would end up being “Liza Forever Minnelli". So I ended up writing songs by taking stock of all the different events in my life, but all those songs were bad—only a stanza from those 15 songs that actually survived to In Conflict. I just started to get a deeper sense of dysphoria; it was like I wasn't writing about these events that happened in my life like I was a man. Which isn't to say that they were gender dysphoric, but they were coming from a place of really deep discomfort. 

Pitchfork: Are you concerned about disclosing so much of yourself on this LP?

OP: So much of the currency of modern bands seems to revolve around the vacuum of availability, so I wanted to preemptively make myself as available as possible, so it would be impossible for anyone to form the wrong impression and make me uncomfortable with the way they were digesting my music. 

Pitchfork: There’s a good deal of imagery regarding physical conflict and violence on this record—particularly "pick up the bayonet, run it through the stomach of your brother," from "Soldiers Rock". 

OP: That was instigated by a book that my brother gave me: The Five Habits of Successful People, or something like that. It's basically like, "Here's how to make money," and it's all great advice, until you get to the last one, which basically says, "You need to take advantage of everybody every chance you can." So what better metaphor for the subliminal state than capitalism? This whole notion that you're trying to do good and make things good for the world, but at the same time the reality is that you have to eat other people to end up on top. 

Pitchfork: There’s a line on “I Am Not Afraid” where you claim that you won’t have any children. Do you think that the generation after us is going to inherit a shittier world than the one we have?

OP: It depends on which article in The Guardian I read this week. What's the name of that 92-year-old dude [James Lovelock] who wrote the How to Survive the Apocalypse books? He's the guy who posited the Gaia hypothesis, that the world is a super-organism. He just did this interview where he was like, "Everybody get ready, the world's about to end. But it's going to be fun! It's going to be like World War II, when everyone was looking out for each other." Then just two years prior he was like, "Oh, I may have been off with my estimates of when the world's going to end. I may have been a bit of a scare-monger." But "I Am Not Afraid" has nothing to do with any sort of global warming scenario. [laughs] I desperately want children. I want like four of them. But I will never have them, I mean at least with the current circumstances, living with my boyfriend in Montreal.

Pitchfork: On “On a Path”, you sing, “You stand in a city you don’t know anymore.” Was that line inspired by your move from Toronto to Montreal?

OP: I lived in Toronto for 15 years, and only just a year ago did I move to Montreal. The song is very, very much about Toronto, but I didn’t want to just be like, “Toronto is a shithole.” I wanted to figure out why I was not enjoying being in the city. Part of it is that Toronto is kind of a shithole. Every city is kind of a shithole. Except Montreal. Montreal is fucking great. And L.A., which is fantastic. 

It’s also the disparity between being a 20-year-old in the city and being a 30-year-old in the city. Half of my friends that I had when I was 23 had left Toronto and were living other places, and a couple of people died as well. So I just found that every time I walked around the city, I was getting a little nostalgic, like, “That’s where I had a really nice meal like five years ago with a friend who now lives in Berlin.” Getting kind of drunk on the sweet nectar of your memories, as Jens [Lekman] would say. It was difficult for me to create new experiences. Everything felt like a vague facsimile of something that had come before. 

Pitchfork: There’s a mention of not wanting to listen to the Smiths' The Queen Is Dead on “The Passions”, is that a similar remark about how you’ve outgrown certain things that seemed so vital in your youth?

OP: No, Morrissey is one of those amazing songwriters that changes as you age. He gave me stuff as a teenager, and he gives me new things every year, so I’m constantly listening to his music. I don’t even consider myself a fan, personally. I have this weird thing where all the artists that I find myself engaging with the most are the ones that I have a bone to pick with. All the music out there that I just love is just kind of like “boring!” because it’s just like, “Yup, you guys did it. That’s made exactly the way it should be made.” Where with Morrissey, it’s like, “Ah, I have so many problems with you!” In fact, I probably shouldn’t say anything about him, because every single time that I’ve tried to say something about Morrissey, I’ve gotten in trouble. [laughs]      

Pitchfork: As someone who’s both inside and outside of Arcade Fire, how did you react to seeing some of the criticism of Reflektor’s massive rollout?

OP: I read the [negative] review in The Washington Post and thought it was hilarious. I think him mixing up congas and bongos [the review stated that "Reflektor" features bongos when it actually contains congas] was horseshit—I don’t know if he was using "bongos" to be derogatory towards the percussionists, but that’s kind of how it evolved. So fuck that guy forever.

And it’s kind of interesting to see people so frustrated with "how long the rollout was." I don’t think those guys wrote a press release. All they did was update their website. But the overzealous fans and music-journalist community were writing articles based on everything that happened. I just feel like the record came out without a lot of commentary from the band, so it was really interesting to see how many people got it wrong. But I’m not a spokesman for the band. Even if I was, I don’t know whether it would be a good look to go around correcting everybody. There were very few articles written about that record that made me feel anything other than impassive and stoic. 

Pitchfork: With both Reflektor and Her, there was a lot of criticism that centered around the idea these were both painfully “white” pieces of art.

OP: Well, the talking about people’s skin color is a very uniquely American thing. And with Arcade Fire, the whole white/black thing tumbles down, because Regine is the white daughter of black people. Her hands are both dark pigmentations. Her sister is dark-skinned, and the situation is that… I have to stop. I haven’t signed any non-disclosure agreements or anything, but it wouldn’t make anybody happy if I finish this thought.  

Pitchfork: How about Her, then?

OP: I have a private list of things that I love about Her and things that I disagree with about Her, that it’s not my place to really discuss. If there are any articles talking about the problems that are created by the movie, I would be really interested in reading them. But all my inlaws were crying when they saw it, so whatever.