He Poos Clouds

[blandine]

It-t-t-t's s-s-su-surprising the way... nice to meet you!! ahaha It's surprising how you call it 'the sound of failure'!! Not that I'm advocating for your compositions, but failure must have a really broad definition for you. As in "ground to grow on", "mistakes that can be learned from", "awesome stuff I do and don't care about much".

[Deleted]

Ontarians

[gammonize]

Sept 17, 2010 14:43:12 GMT -5 Alyssa! said:

to be honest the concepts used in He Poos Clouds are pretty one-dimensional to me: The D&D schools of magic were a nice form, but besides the elements of fantasy and control, it didn't deeply reflect the album's music or lyrics

Wasn`t that the point? The Pookah burnt Owen at the stake for trying to use magic and fantasy to discuss problems that exist in the real world, especially since Owen admits himself at the end that he doesn`t believe in these things. Yet you don`t really need divination to obsess over the future, girls shouldn`t have to rely on evocation to be taken seriously, geeks will find ways to seal off their hearts without abjuration etc.

You take the magic away but the magic was just a way of discussing those things. Should ideas be dismissed because they are expressed through fantasy? How do we feel about novels? Or films by hip Spanish directors? They`re fictional too. Though I think an album like HPC or Heartland occupys a kind of middle place because despite being fantasy, it is still an album and therefore more readily accepted to be `valid.` You throw a violin and orchestra in there and you`ve got yourself an opinion worth having.

So I would never say it was one-dimensional, it had a profound impact on me, even if Owen didn`t like it himself. Owen may admit that it is a lie to say an album could have the ability to stop someone from thinking suicidal thoughts, and that magic may be real, yet somehow I still don`t feel so much like killing myself anymore.

[Owen from Final Fantasy]

No, it's not that "I didn't like it", I did like it, stand by it, etc. But it's not meant to be a "success", like an Ikea table or a figure skating routine or a shaved chest.

Re: suicidal thoughts... I realize now that statement came off as "this record will cure your depression". That wasn't what I meant. Many of the songs deal with death or suicidal thoughts but try and suck out the romanticism that is often attached to these things. Instead of a sentiment such as "Without you I'm nothing," the sentiment is one that holds love and death as things in opposition to each other.

This idea comes from a skepticism that I have toward the fascination people have with dead actors and musicians. Seeing Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis or Janis Joplin on MOJO magazine covers every year just makes me annoyed that their stories are revered and celebrated. The musicians I respect are the ones who work hard, grow old, and treat their depression with exercise or psychiatric treatment.

It's all very capital-S Serious to break it down like this. I think K. Hanna said it best: "Everything you think and everything you feel is all right, all right, all right, all right, all ri-ight." Wish I could say it as succinctly as that.

[blandine]

I never thought the discussion would come to this profundity - guess I'm lucky for not being a native English speaker and thus able to distance myself from the personal aspects of the composition. Besides being shunned by intimacy I also feel totally uncomfortable with any serious thoughts about death/suicide/boo. I wouldn't care so much as to say this if HPC wasn't among my favorite music ever ever ever.

Owen, thank you lots for having composed all this special music!

[sohakes]

Oh man, that's funny because:
I'm brazilian too
"Video game soundtracks are some of my favorite things, and, in fact, it was a search relating to Final Fantasy music that led me to He Poos Clouds in the first place!" < yeah, too.
"I do not think I am exaggerating in saying that I spent a week listening to nothing but that record." Not really, but I spent more than a week listening nothing but Owen Pallett.

And I must confess, nobody really liked Owen Pallett so much here on my family. They said he don't know how to sing, because he kept singing low and high and some other things. But idk, I just love the way he sings or play the songs, and we were listening on a FM transmitter on a car, really poor quality. But some other friends liked it.

I must admit I don't understood all songs reading the lyrics, on the He Poos Clouds. I took a look at website with lyrics meanings, but even now I don't understood it completely hahaha, I'm a failure. But Heartland is easier, and loved both the music and lyrics. In fact, I don't remember disliking any song from any record.

"Owen, thank you lots for having composed all this special music!" - Agree!

Sorry for the poor english.

[unctious]

Necro'ing this thread, as I've been revisiting past albums in new headphones.

I think this is my first time my mind tracked the running piano line in I'm Afraid of Japan starting at 2:06--so, so pretty but so devastating. Feels like I stumbled upon a secret, having listened to the album hundreds of times but finding something new.

[eamas]

Thank you for necroing! I'm so enthused to discuss more of Owen's old music with the remasters fast approaching.

Also you're so right. That moment in I'm Afraid of Japan always feels operatic to me, like something that would be more suited as a death soliloquy on a stage. I also distinctly remember noticing that piano line this year, in a way I never had before, and being winded. Thank you for mentioning it so I had an excuse to relisten today.

The other song on HPC that really hit me differently on a relisten was The Pooka Sings. The long, slow melodic phrases, the tumbling momentum of the chords, I really do see a winged beast flying across a horizon. And the piano riff that begins near the end (I'm typing this message in class so don't have time to cite a time, ha-- it's just before "the pooka wings away") makes me misty without fail now.

"The sentiment is one that holds love and death as things in opposition to each other." This is beautiful and I see this as one of the major threads through Owen's music. I'm so glad to hear this from the mouth of the artist, because this is one of my favorite things I personally glean from Owen's work.

[kit]

Sept 3, 2019 13:03:12 GMT -5 eamas said:

The other song on HPC that really hit me differently on a relisten was The Pooka Sings. The long, slow melodic phrases, the tumbling momentum of the chords, I really do see a winged beast flying across a horizon. And the piano riff that begins near the end (I'm typing this message in class so don't have time to cite a time, ha-- it's just before "the pooka wings away") makes me misty without fail now.

A few years ago I DJ'd for a college radio station and my obsession was finding songs where the end of one blended perfectly into the beginning of the next. I discovered that this was the case for The Pooka Sings and The Passions from In Conflict: one fades so well into the other that I wonder whether it could've been intentional.

For me, Heartland is THE album-as-entire-singular-thing. I love some songs on it more than others, but I most love listening to it from start to finish. The drive from my girlfriend's house to mine is about 50 minutes, so I've had this opportunity a lot. I see Has A Good Home and In Conflict as albums more driven by individual songs/stories, but that's totally a statement about my relationship to them as a listener and not Owen's intention. I do consider He Poos Clouds more of a singular unit akin to Heartland+Spectrum, and I'm not really sure why that is. I mean, you have This Lamb Sells Condos, about which there is no shortage of discussion, alongside Jenna Bush beheading herself: both social and political statements, but executed in totally different ways. And then there are songs like If I Were A Carp, which (as I understand it) describes Owen's experience of a family member's death with this dark depiction of the afterlife as an empty place separate its mythology and impossible to comprehend, all implanted in this story of sailors losing their minds in a storm. These are really disparate concepts in the sense of like, "a concept album," but they cohere so well for me as aggregate bits of He Poos Clouds that I never even questioned why. Maybe it is the string quartet thing, or the D&D thing. The album feels structured and compact and deliberate.

Actually, I just checked the lyrics of Carp and I totally imagined the storm. That's just an image I got from the song, I guess.

[joe]

A fine necro, I looked up Owen on yt music to listen through IAOJ (the version I have is only 57 seconds..) but anyway only In Conflict is present but a amazing 5 and 6 remix EP and a 2 song colab with Daphni that I had never heard/was aware existed (a good headphone bass test too) and a 2008 single for Lewis' Dream (Flora Advert )

Joe

[adrestia]

I'm so glad this thread was revived! I recently listened to He Poos Clouds in one sitting because I found out the whole album was uploaded in one YouTube video (usually I just pick and choose individual songs, typically from the start of the album). Like someone else in this thread said earlier, a relisten really made me love "I'm Afraid of Japan" a whole lot more when I hadn't paid it much attention in the past. Absolutely gorgeous, my favorite part is when the strings swell towards the midpoint of the song.

Additionally, the last time I listened to the album in full, I did not understand Dungeons and Dragons as much as I do now. I love analyzing the lyrics of each of the songs and now realizing how they connect to the schools of magic- which is arguably the coolest overarching theme to base an album on.

I usually throw In Conflict or Heartland on when I want to listen to OP (because they're the most accessible via Spotify currently), so I'm really glad I went back to revisit He Poos Clouds- I had completely forgotten how awesome it is. I cannot even explain how excited I am for the remasters to go up on Spotify, this year can't go by quickly enough!