Mostly melodic, tense, artsy chamber pop music, inspired by video game music. A second album by Canadian indie rock artist Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett), winner of the 2006 Polaris Prize for best Canadian album. Soft singing and great arrangements, classic in nature, mostly for a string quartet, but also for piano, horns, and percussion. The lyrics supposedly combine fantastical imagery, drawn on the schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons, or on Nintendo’s video game The Legend of Zelda, and real life experiences. Interesting stuff. Must give it a listen/play. I think that there might be some minor FCCs (8,9).

*1/4:24. Strings, harpshichord, and background female vocals.
2/3:31. Tense strings, percussion, some horns. A bit like a musical, including dramatic screaming.
*3/4:39. A ballad for piano and vox about a Canadian real estate giant (Lamb), describing an argument with his wife. Nice female vox chorus and recitative in the end.
4/4:03. Ominous strings. Psych. Reverberating part in the middle.
5/0:57. Opens with a violin pizzicato, continues with violins and singing. Gets futuristically weird at the end.
6/3:56. Strings and vox. Some Glass-like repetition. Singing, recitative style. Ends tensely with a prolonged one note and quiet singing.
*7/4:31. A suspenseful stick-on-wood-percussion-based piece. Good rhythms, but also the singing and strings that join later are very interesting.
*8/2:56. Possible FCC in chorus. Strong and good violin playing. Male vox chorus.
**9/3:03. FCC (shit)? A Kurt-Weill-like song. Violin and accordion. Accelerates in the end. *10/5:25. A Baroquish requiem song, about Pooka, with a piano doing a moonlight sonata thingy.