Feist is the solo project of Canada's Leslie Feist, a prolific artist who has also played in one capacity or another with Broken Social Scene, Kings of Convenience and half a dozen other bands. The Reminder, her third release, comes from the same well of quiet, appealing songwriting, and delicate vocalizations that made 2004's Let It Die such a sweet treat. This one is a bit more hushed and ballad heavy, closer to Cat Power than Peaches (with whom Feist has also worked with in the past) but maintains an indie-minded blend of confessional pop, jazzy folk, and lo-fi torch songs. The comparatively upbeat single "My Moon My Man" splits her voice off into unexpected harmonies, just dissonant enough to stick in your head. It's hard to predict where her melodies are going to end up; "Brandy Alexander" starts with a simple snap-pulse, and gradually unfolds into a cathartic chorus of sweeping vocal overlays. Throughout, the record profits from a simple, unfussy aesthetic that keeps the production minimal and the emphasis squarely on Feist's cracking, wistful vibrato. Everything sounds deliberate, but not obsessed over, like an e-mailed wedding invitation. It's a low-pressure vibe, welcoming and content to linger. And linger you will. --Matthew Cooke
Review by Marisa Brown
When Leslie Feist released her breakthrough Let It Die, almost instantly she became an indie icon. Her pretty, sometimes melancholic love songs, her clear, campfire voice, and her vaguely jazz- and disco-influenced arrangements (highlighted no better than with her cover of the Bee Gees' "Inside and Out"), and her association with darlings Broken Social Scene wooed critics and music fans alike. Her follow-up, The Reminder, will serve as proof that Feist's success was no fluke, as the album contains more of the same sweet, introspective lyrics and chords that float around love and longing (or lack thereof) like cottonwood seeds in late spring. Because that's what The Reminder, like Let It Die, is really: warm, lazy music made for those summer afternoons that creep into evening before you realize it. Feist's voice is as cleanly emotive as ever as she sings lines like "There's a limit to your love/Like a waterfall in slow motion" (from "The Limit to Your Love"), "Piecemeal can break your home in half/A love is not complete with only heat" (from "Intuition"), or "Put your weight against the door/Kick drum on the basement floor" (from the upbeat "I Feel It All"), confident but with a weakness, a fragility in it that comes out during the most sentimental lines. But this can also be a drawback. The singer can, at times, border on a kind of sappiness that seems better suited to Top 40 Matrix-produced pop songs than hipster-blog accolades. "We don't need to fight and cry/We, we could hold each other tight tonight," she breathes in the otherwise lovely "So Sorry," whose puerile rhymes are fortunately held up by the track's breezy sophistication. The same cannot be said however for "Brandy Alexander," which is too syrupy for its own sake (much like the drink on which it is based), with its repeated phrase "He's my Brandy Alexander" (juxtaposed with "I'm his Brandy Alexander") and "Goes down easy," as Motown-esque harmonies jump in to emphasize that last word. Why Feist, who shows her lyrical skills in tracks like "The Water," "My Moon My Man," and her reinterpretation of Nina Simone's "See-Line Woman" (incorrectly identified as "Sea Lion Woman"), "Sealion," believes it necessary to include such saccharine lines is a bit confusing, and hints at the suspicion that while undoubtedly she seems to have enjoyed very much making The Reminder, she also wasn't really challenging herself with it. She follows the same path she took with Let It Die -- which, being as strong as it was, is certainly not the worst decision she could've made -- and does it well, which means that the album does end up a consistently good listen. But it also means that it's not much of a departure from what she's shown before. Who knows, Feist may be able to go on charming us by doing the same thing for eternity, but there may also come a point when we want something more, and it's still unclear if she'll be able to deliver that.
Feist
The Reminder
[Cherrytree/Interscope; 2007]
Rating: 8.8
On "Mushaboom", the signature track from her 2004 breakthrough album Let It Die, Leslie Feist claimed, "It may be years until the day my dreams will match up with my pay." Now, after countless sold-out shows across the world, close to half of a million records sold, and placement in a commercial for British bed manufacturers Silentnight, it seems safe to say this NPR darling's "pay" should be satisfactory. But, while Feist may now be able to afford the idyllic hideaway she pined for in "Mushaboom", the Calgary native still wouldn't be able to enjoy its creature comforts thanks to her hectic, frequent-flyer schedule. Alas: Faraway, so close. Brimming with heartbreak, solitude, and foggy memories, Feist's "dreams" still sound distant on The Reminder, the singer's outstanding third album.
Mostly written on the road, the new LP gets its inspiration from the disconnections of non-stop, intercontinental hotel-jumping. Talking about her ephemeral lifestyle in an interview with Pitchfork last year, Feist said, "You just never set roots; you take pleasure in simple conversations, because you know you're not going to have much more than that." Though she's trekked on her own and with bands including By Divine Right and Broken Social Scene for more than a decade, the 31-year-old songwriter sounds desperate for something more than "simple conversation" here.
Unlike the half-covers/half-original split of Let It Die, every song but one was at least co-written by Feist on The Reminder. (And her buzzing take on the traditional playground sing-along "Sea Lion Woman" makes it distinctively Feist-ian anyway.) Whereas her last album's smoothed-out eclecticism could be both daunting and empty, The Reminder is equally diverse yet more full-blooded. From the indie pop of "I Feel It All" to the creeping electro-ballad "Honey Honey", the album ambles effortlessly; its musical palette is wide enough to stave off repetition yet innate enough to offer an intense cohesiveness. The record's keen combination of off-the-cuff production and no-fat songwriting is likely linked to its method: With several songs whittled down over years of performances, Feist-- aided by her usual one-named conspirators Gonzales and Mocky, along with Jamie Lidell and others-- recorded them in less than a week in a manor outside Paris. Fleeting touches from horns, glockenspiels, makeshift choirs, and other subtle accoutrements never announce themselves ostentatiously. Instead, the LP relies on a modest refinement that breaks with current singer-songwriter trends that promote infinite ambition in lieu of the basics-- melody, arrangement, feeling.
Hardly the first singer-songwriter to love, live, lose, and emote, Feist once again elevates herself above countless other diary-keeping tunesmiths with a voice that could make even Dick Cheney weep. Marked by specks of Dusty Springfield's soul, Björk's confrontational adventurousness, and Joni Mitchell's warmth, the singular allure of Feist's vocals are difficult to deny or overstate; You might hear her over cappuccino-machine hisses in Starbucks, but her direct-line moans easily cut through the biscotti muzak. And on The Reminder, her whisper-to-wail control-- exemplified by stark heart-tuggers "The Water" and "Intuition"-- is even more striking than before.
"With sadness so real that it populates the city and leaves you homeless again," coos Feist on "The Park", a desolate, lovelorn lament. The song-- with its references to a relationship torn by distance, omnipotent nature (a carefree bird can be heard mocking Feist's sadness in the background), and a hazy "past" that offers partly-forgotten flickers and flashes-- is a fitting summary of The Reminder's wounded pleas. Leery of a sixth sense, the songstress concludes "Intuition" with a question, "Did I miss out on you?"-- its insolubility packing more ache than a hundred clear-cut break-up songs. Such eternally spotty "what if?" queries needn't always strike such dour chords. On the shaggy, Broken Social Scene-esque romp "Past to Present", the refrain ("There's so much past inside my present") has the singer embracing yesteryear with a proud vitality. But no matter where she sits on love's teeter-totter-- down on the after-the-fact apology of "I'm Sorry" or aloft in heady infatuation on "Brandy Alexander"-- her philosophy-of-self is sound.
After inconclusively rifling though her personal history for 12 songs, Feist finally seems to reach an Emersonian transcendence on finale "How My Heart Behaves": "I'm a stem now...fanning my yellow eye," she sings over wafting piano and harp. Though the song reads like a zen tutorial to her own unsettled emotions, it still finishes with a query: "What grew and inside who?" What she's referring to isn't exactly clear-- and that's the point. Pasts pass. People stay, go. But finding sanctuary within half-realized dreams and faces? Timeless.
-Ryan Dombal, April 30, 2007
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