Death becomes violinist Owen Pallett on his unusual new album, a magically-tinted mixture of baroque pop and classical, writes Jim Carroll

BUSY boy, Owen Pallett, busy boy. You'll find the Canadian violinist's mark on a rake of interesting records which have emerged over the last couple of years. If you were an indie act from Maple Country seeking bespoke string arrangements, there was only one young man to call and that was Pallett.

While he's worked with such below-the-line entities as The Hidden Cameras, Les Mouches and Jim Guthrie, it was Pallett's hook-up with Arcade Fire which made him a bold-face name in the indie firmament. He arranged the strings on Funeral and even joined the band for a spell on the road. Naturally, even more calls came his way as a result.

That was then, though. "I was such a big whore, I'd play on anyone's record," says Pallett about how he operated before he decided to concentrate wholly on Final Fantasy. "I still have a policy that, if I can, I will do string arrangements for anyone for free. But I find I have less and less time to do that."

Final Fantasy is his solo run, a parade of music featuring one man, his violin and as much loops as you can handle. While debut album Has a Good Home (chockablock with love songs dedicated to his boyfriend) received a resounding round of applause, new album He Poos Clouds is the one which really knocks over the skittles.

Joined by a well-stocked chamber ensemble for the trip, Pallett's introverted dramas make for hugely diverting fare. At times reminiscent of Arthur Russell as tutored by Philip Glass, at other times bringing the more intriguing baroque pop practitioners to mind, He Poos Clouds sounds like a seriously classical piece of work.

But there's another angle to this album: the song cycles are based around the schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons.

"There's a pretty long explanation and a short explanation for this, so I think I'll stick with the short one for the benefit of your readers," says Pallett. "It doesn't come from an interest in playing Dungeons & Dragons so much as I'm very interested in how Dungeons & Dragons attempts to codify a whole list of unexplainable phenomena in our daily lives as being magical.

"In a way, the record started out as a record about death. Instead of looking at death from a, well, 'you die' perspective, I looked at it more from a perspective of necromancy and how reminiscing about your younger years could be a form of divination. It's basically an album about fairly mundane things, but seen through the eyes of somebody who had accepted Dungeons & Dragons as their primary form of religious belief."

Pallett admits it may be a little unusual as a concept. "I suppose what I'm doing is coming from a not-so-popular perspective. After all, nihilist and Christian music are a lot more accepted because you can get all the references right away. When you have someone like the Sex Pistols or Arctic Monkeys singing, you know what they're on about right away. Of course, I'm doing it with a nod and a wink. I don't live my life like that. It's not like I'm going 'time for dinner, time to sharpen up my transmutation skills'."

Death is a theme which appears again and again in Pallett's work. There's Funeral, an album tempered by various Arcade Fire band members coming to terms with the deaths of relatives. Then there's the new album, informed in large part by how Pallett's atheism was challenged by the death of his godfather.

"Watching someone close to you die is a dark and scary thing when you don't believe in anything," he says. "The album is an examination of the fact that atheists probably do need something to believe in. These weird phenomena come along and while we don't believe in them, we will talk about them and codify them. It's a very interesting aspect of atheism. The only other way to deal with death is to laugh at it and not take it seriously, which is the opposite of how many young people look at death."

Pallett dislikes the revisionism which happens when an artist dies.

"There's a cult of suicide which many people indulge in, whereby after an artist's tragic death, their work becomes more successful and is subject to all manner of re-evaluation. It's one of my fantasies to change that view if I ruled the world. Every time I see Ian Curtis on the cover of a magazine, I feel sick to my stomach. It's quite sad that someone like him would be so celebrated so many years on for how he died as well as dubious music he made."

Back with his own music, he's satisfied with how He Poos Clouds turned out in the wash. "The only decision I took before I begun was that there was going to be a string quartet on the entire album. I didn't start out to make a more classical-sounding record, but that's what happened. It took a long time to make because I was trying to compile only the best ideas. I tried to avoid writing pop songs and focused on making more of a cohesive record than the last one."

He's enjoying the incongruity of taking this album on the road. "Really, it's quite hilarious and stupid. The record is this gigantic, ornate, orchestrated monster and the live show is me walking onstage by myself. OK, I'll have a drummer with me on tour who some critics will say adds vastly to my palette of sounds. I'll have a projectionist, too, which I know sounds like a giant yawn, but she is amazing because she does live projections overhead while I'm playing. But that's the live show."

For those who go to see Final Fantasy on this tour, Pallett promises something special. "I'm a big Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark fan, so I'm going to perform the A-side of Dazzleships from start to finish using only looped violin. Trust me on this: it will be great."

Final Fantasy plays Whelan's, Dublin on May 14th. He Poos Clouds is released on Tomlab Records on May 19th