Final Fantasy

I went to see Final Fantasy last year at the Independent with relatively low interest, simply because it had been some time since I'd listened to 2006's He Poos Clouds. The show was simply phenomenal (possibly the best thing I saw last year), amplifying the tension that permeates Owen Pallett's songwriting through a performance that was principally just Pallett, a violin, a piano, and a looping machine. The biggest surprise, though, was the unbelievable rendition of this song, originally found on Destroyer's Your Blues. That album is all MIDI symphony, so it's something of an equally natural and unnatural thing for Final Fantasy to perform this track as a raw, organic, stripped-down number. I have collected more crummy live mp3s of this song than I care to admit, but I'm sure even a pristine take wouldn't capture the feeling of screaming along the "Ba da, ba da, ba da, ba da!"s in a live setting.

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