Lookin’ pretty good on page 20 of the January 6 issue of The L Magazine: my review of Owen Pallett‘s new album Heartland.
Just when you’re lost in an intricate waterfall of arpeggios or perhaps bopping your head involuntarily as a killer new drum pattern enters, Pallett will hit with you with a clever lyric or a memorable hook or something else that just shouldn’t be there, not according to the standard blueprints anyway. Foremost among these successes would be the refrain from sort-of title track “Oh Heartland, Up Yours!”—actually less amusing in execution than the punctuation might make it seem on paper, instead coming across as a tender Sufjan project gone awry, perhaps lamenting the various cruelties of 50 women instead of celebrating their home states. More