Montreal might eat its young but Montreal can't get us down

Last night at 9:15pm... do you know where you should have been? At the Final Fantasy concert at Bluesfest. Which was one of the (if not THE) most amazing concerts I've ever seen.

Here's some background. Final Fantasy is a one man band, basically. Owen Pallett is that one man. He plays violin, keyboard, and sings. Not all at once -- he's awesome, but no one is that awesome. He uses recording pedals. He lays down one harmony and then loops it and adds something on top of that... on and on. And then he opens his lovely mouth and sings. It's the kinda of music you just lose yourself in. The songs just get better and better as he builds them. He uses everything to its max. He drums on his violin to add percussion bits, he uses the back of his bow to create a new sound, he even yells into his violin, distorting his voice.

So basically, it was an amazing concert. The set list was perfect. He even played a Block Party song, and two encores that were the songs I still wanted to hear. One thing that I really liked was that his friend Steph ("WHO'S STEPH?" Owen: "Who's Steph? She's the one on stage who isn't me, I already explained this to you.") did really cool visuals. As they were setting up the stage (Kevin: "Quick! Take of pic of Owen's ass!") they put up a sheet and brought out an old school projector. The kind we use to take notes from at school. Steph turned this into the coolest visals. Layering images on top of each other, using textures, making these images come alive. It really added to the show, since Owen is only one guy with a violin, a keyboard and some stuff at his feet. He's smart that one. Puts on a great show.

After, he signed autographs. When the we heard that, Jake and I high-tailed it to the Compact Music tent where the signing was to be. Unfortunately, Hedley was still playing, which resulted in a lot of Owen fans yelling angrily and rolling their eyes, because Hedley was so bad, and the lead singer was incredibly obnoxious. I was pretty glad when it ended.

When I got to the front of the line, unfortunately my phone was too low in batteries for a picture! I was so so sad. Instead I hugged Owen. Best moment ever. The first time I saw him play, 2 years ago at Vinyl Cafe, I said "I love him! I just want to give him a big hug." and I got to. How lucky is that?

It's really too bad that he's gay. As Olivia said, all good violinists are.