I’ve submitted an album review for Plan B magazine: “Has A Good Home” by Final Fantasy. It’s the solo project of Owen Pallett, violinist for umpteen Toronto bands. They said “no word limit: it’s for the web”. Regular readers will know this is something you should never ask of me. I do have a tendency to go into Alistair Cooke mode and ramble on about some broader subject that occurs to me halfway through. All very nice if you like seeing my brain flail and flounce skittishly before your eyes, but not so readable if you actually want to hear whether the album’s any good.

So I gave them a more concise piece, and present the offcuts below. The Gregory’s Girl quote is as remembered, so it’s probably not verbatim.

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Perhaps there’s something about the way a violin seems above the grubby indie band world. One can play it standing up, dancing about. Unless you’re Mr Chuck Berry, dancing with a guitar can look very embarrassing indeed. But it’s hard to look a fool with a fiddle. Is the violin the haughtiest, purest, most edifying of instruments? Would Mr Pallett’s life and work be quite the same if he were playing a trombone? Did he choose the violin because it suited his character, or was his character shaped over time by being a violinist?

An instant survey suggests itself. If you have ever played a musical instrument, Dear Reader, what was the reason for picking up that specific item? Did your parents have a thing for the oboe? Why did the tilted circles and spider-like poles of the drum kit speak closest to your heart? Was the bassoon the only one left on the list, and you were late getting to class that day? Just what is it about violinists that have all the fun, that get to play the catchy bits? I’m reminded of an observation on this theme in “Hymn” by Alan Bennett:

“An orchestra has a class system all its own, of which the strings are the aristocracy, the intellectuals the woodwind, and the proletariat the brass. The players take on the characteristics of their instruments, brass jolly and fat, clarinets and bassoons soulful and reedy, most of the raffish romantic players in the violins and cellos. Of course, it’s not hard for the strings, who so often have the melody, to seem transported and full of feeling. They have none of the handicaps of the brass, and had they to stop every so often to empty the spit out of the violins, it would be a different story.”

Lately I saw the unquestionably raffish and romantic Mr Pallett on the dreaded Jools Holland programme, sawing frantically away as part of The Arcade Fire. Wonderful stuff, but the perfection of the set-up did remind me of that less perfect, more decorative cliché which TV often indulges – The Rock Band Recruits A String Section. I’m thinking of the Manics playing A Design For Life on Top Of The Pops, dressing down with their own clothes but dressing the song up with a string section. Cue instant hit. Likewise The Verve with their Bittersweet Symphony, Oasis with their Wonderwall cello, and pretty much every Britpop band with a decent budget. Menswear’s fourth or fifth single down the line? Time to call in the violins. Even the original version of the most recorded Beatles song, Yesterday, is dominated by a string section. Guitars be damned, most real people prefer strings, really.

Even the most token and lazily-arranged of string sections will bring a tried and trusted illusion of ingratiating sweetness against an uninspired XFM-targeted guitar sound. Even the most rotten and tuneless rock song becomes a listenable and approachable Radio 2-baiting number that your mother would allow into the house. Poor old string sections- what must they think, phoned up only when some hyped indie rock band needs a lazy, desperate stab at a chart hit? No wonder Mr P refers to his lot as a musical rent boy. A gaming boy on the game.

Another quote suggests itself, this time from the film Gregory’s Girl:

“Is he still a virgin?”
“Wouldn’t have thought so. He’s been in the school orchestra for over a year now.”

So, if we’re all agreed that string arrangements in rock are usually a Good Thing, why not sack the dreary old guitar band and let the string section write the songs?

This may be one reason why the Final Fantasy album is a record so instantly classic-sounding, yet still tangential and clandestine.