What you have to love about the modern music scene, especially when it comes to the independent scene, is the sheer ambition of so many artists. From one man deciding to put together a three-CD set of love songs to another saying that he wants to produce a suite of albums, released one at a time, about each of our 50 states, so many musicians are letting their bold ideas take sway and, thankfully, actually have the talent to make those ideas into something worth listening to.

You can add to the growing list of ambitious and talented indie musicians a young man by the name of Owen Pallett. As of yet, Pallett is most known for his work on the string arrangements that wend their way through The Arcade Fire's Funeral, but he will surely be getting more name recognition of his own once word of this record gets out. Although the project's name does conjure up frightening worries about the CD being full of either doom metal, hardcore techno or some wispy twee pop, what is presented are 10 songs written mostly for string quartet, but also overlaid with touches of harpsichord, piano and the occasional smattering of percussion. The end result is reminiscent of both the artful pop of Rufus Wainwright and some of Philip Glass's theatrical work from the 80s.

If that weren't enough, Pallett also showcases his amazing way with words, filling each song with amazing imagery and characters that wouldn't be out of place in either an Edward Gorey tale or a book by Chuck Palaniuk. In "Song Song Song", there's the "daughter who'll eat anything" whose parents "feed her words words words" and also threaten to send her off to reform school "where they'll make a man of you" and "press what is left into new." Earlier, in the song, "The Lamb Sells Condos", Pallett, alongside a jaunty piano rumble, rattles off a gallery of characters including a man whose "massive genitals/refuse to cooperate" and a young man who "burned off both his eyebrows and half a head of hair."

The only strike against this record is how much Pallett's voice tends to fall into the background of most of the songs found here. Not only do the lyrics tend to lose a lot of their weight when you have to strain to make them out, but his voice starts to become just another instrument in the mix, turning the record into more of a modern classical suite rather than the postmodern pop record that it seems it was designed to be.