In the past, you might have been forgiven for thinking that Owen Pallett’s music may have inhabited a world that was a little too rarefied for its own good: released in 2006 under the name Final Fantasy, his second album was called He Poos Clouds, a conceptual work based on the eight schools of magic in Dungeons and Dragons. On In Conflict, however, the Oscar-nominated singer-songwriter (and sometime Arcade Fire and Caribou alumnus) hits a perfect art/pop balance. On the one hand, it’s an almost painfully personal piece of work, filled with aching songs like I Am Not Afraid and Song for Five and Six, the arrangements are hugely ambitious confections of strings and electronics, and there are segues and guest appearances by Brian Eno. On the other, the melodies are beautiful and often strangely euphoric, tugging against the lyrical gloom to remarkable effect: in a different, slightly better world, The Riverbed could conceivably be the kind of song that stadium-sized audiences punch the air to.
