Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist. (Mary Rozzi/EMI Music Canada)
When vying for people’s attention, our instinct is to shout. Singer Leslie Feist tried that more than a decade ago, with Calgary punk band Placebo, but later discovered that a more dignified — and yes, defiant — approach was to whisper. Her first solo album, Monarch (1999), explored this newfound restraint, but it was on Let It Die (2004) that it flowered into an esthetic. Recorded in Paris with fellow Canadian expat Gonzales, the album was a languid blend of slinky pop hymns (Mushaboom, Gatekeeper) and unlikely standards (the Bee Gees’ Inside and Out, Blossom Dearie’s Now at Last). One of the most critically lauded albums of ’04, Let It Die has sold more than 400,000 copies worldwide and likely inspired just as many indie-boy crushes.
When it came time to commit new songs to tape, Feist and her collaborators (Gonzales again, as well as Mocky and Jamie Lidell) rented a 200-year-old French mansion that overlooked the Seine River. Why? For the romance of it… but also because Feist wanted the new record to have a more live feel; she wanted the luxuriant space to become a sly presence on the album.
Buoyed by the strutting first single, My Moon My Man, the new disc, entitled The Reminder, is an even more confident foray for Feist. Songs like 1 2 3 4 and I Feel It All, as well as a rousing, clap-happy cover of the Nina Simone song Sea Lion Woman, will fortify her position as pop’s most enigmatic chanteuse. Feist spoke to CBC Arts Online about nostalgia, the trouble with live recordings and the joy of happy accidents.
Q: What does the title, The Reminder, refer to?
A: It was a vague and liquid, non-concrete word that could be interpreted any way. I like smoke and mirrors and trapdoors and quicksand more than someone at a podium trying to tell me what’s what. I certainly could never tell anyone what’s what. [The title] doesn’t have one meaning; that’s the point of a word like that. It’s a chameleon to be taken in different lights.
Q: If I were to interpret it, I would say that given your penchant for old songs, as well as your stripped-down recordings, that you’re trying to remind listeners of the simple beauty of melody.
A: The only function of the title is to give people their own theories, so I can’t say yes or no. I love the old adage, “We see things as we are, not as they are.” A title like this is a mirror. I can’t really say what it means, which means that it can change.
Q: What were you trying to accomplish sonically with this album?
A: I wanted to have the real-world air in the microphones, not the hermetically sealed, vacuum-packed world of proper studios. I wanted the musicians to hear each other and for us all to be in a three-legged race, tied together, relying on each other to keep on our feet. And that meant a lot of live takes.
Q: There are a few unexpected background noises on the album — I’m thinking of the distant animal noises on The Park or the clatter of footsteps on My Moon My Man. Were those mistakes that you decided to keep?
A: If something has nothing to do with the music but is leaking into the microphones along with the song, then I would say that’s not a mistake, if that happened unexpectedly. I would say I have a much broader door for those mistakes to come in. There’s not a filter. Misfiring on a performance is different than having the dog bark [on a recording]; the dog barked because, hey, it was singing along. I just leave a larger margin for the wild card.
Feist performs at Le printemps de Bourges rock festival in Bourges, France on April 19, 2007. (Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images)
Q: How do you feel about concert recordings?
A: I don’t like hearing live gigs, and in fact I’ve kiboshed having radio stations park the truck outside [a venue], although the CBC’s going to do [my] Massey Hall [show]. I swear to God, the CBC’s the only radio station in the world that I’ve done that with, because [the final recording] sounds alive at the end, as opposed to listening to [the recording] through a tiny aluminum hole.
I feel that gigs, what’s interesting about them is that they live in the moment. Four walls, all those individuals that came to make that room what it is, and then when everyone leaves at the end, it dissipates, everyone takes a little bit of the gig with them, stores it or drops it on the sidewalk on the way out. It’s gone, when it’s over. You don’t have this immortality concern.
Q: Do you have a preference - doing albums or live performances?
A: I just don’t like when the lines get blurry. I’m doing a gig, and then all of a sudden, Tuesday night is one for the ages. I like that, when I’m in the studio, I’m thinking about the song with the microscope and when I’m on stage, I’m thinking about the song as a waterslide – momentum, movement, obstacles, quick.
Q: Your distinct vocal style is largely the result of having shredded your voice as a young punk singer in Calgary back in the early ’90s. Do you see that now as a happy accident?
A: I was about 18 or 19 when it happened. Anyway, I think I was done singing that kind of music. When I did start to feel stronger again, I didn’t ever try to do what I had done in the past. Yeah, exactly, it was a bit of a happy accident. It led me to melody, it led me to different styles of music, a lot of instrumental music. I also left my hometown when it happened. It was an impetus to leave the comfort zone.
Q: Your music has a restraint and quietude that’s rare in the current music marketplace. Are you deliberately defying the norm?
A: I don’t really know what’s going on out there. I know what my friends are doing. I think I just don’t have the ability to see anything but from my own eyes. I have this bizarre lack of knowledge of what’s going on. Sure, I watch Lost sometimes, and I know who Britney Spears is, and that she shaved her head — you can’t avoid it. But basically, I happen upon things that friends hand me. I’m the roommate who always borrowed from the other roommate’s amazing CD collection.
Q: Given your timeless sound and your penchant for older covers, do you feel, spiritually, that you belong to another era?
A: I have nothing to compare it to. I’m a nostalgic person. I love reading historical fiction or memoirs, of people like Catherine the Great or Gad Beck, who is a Jewish man who was stuck in the [Nazi] concentration camps. But I really only know my life from my own two feet. I try not to take for granted the stories that my grandparents tell me or… I’m reading Grapes of Wrath this week, and all the girl wants, all she wants is an icebox, to not eat rotten food and the choice to have something cool in the afternoon.
I only know where I’m at from where I’m at. I like living in the time we’re living in. It’s dangerous; we’re on the brink of disaster. It’s sort of an important time to be alive, to try to do what we can to flip it. Artistically, my two feet are where they are. I don’t have perspective.
The Reminder is in stores now.
Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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