Review: Feist - Let It Die - Archives

Feist
Let It Die
http://www.murmurs.c...achmentid=53864
Interscope/Universal (US release)
2005

It sure took a long time for Leslie Feist to get her solo career started. Her debut album, Monarch , was actually released in 1999, but it ended up quickly forgotten and relegated to the bargain bins of music shops. Since then, the Canadian songstress has wandered around the music scene, lending her skills to and hanging out with some of the indie scene's finest artists. Just for the record, those experiences included adding her voice to Peaches' (her roommate at that time) debut album, playing Madame in Calexico's "Ballad of Cable Hogue", singing for the loose Toronto superband Broken Social Scene, playing guitar in By Divine Right, and recording vocals for Kings of Convenience, The New Deal, and Jane Birkin. Finally, as she was touring Europe with prankster MC and Peaches collaborator Chilly Gonzales, the opportunity to record again turned up in the studio of French producer Renaud Letang. Feist moved her things to Paris and started putting the demos of her latest years to cd. The result, Let It Die , finally gives the singer a real career starting point.

If anything, this album is a vocal one. The music is fine, quite good actually, but Feist's main talent resides in her voice. This is the cement keeping the album together, since the range of vintage inspirations the artist draws from could lose her more than one follower. Rest assured Feist doesn't follow the well-worn roads of today's navel-gazing retro. Instead, her choice to dig into mainly forgotten pop of the 50s to the late 70s � old-style ballads, storytelling folk, doo-wop, vocal jazz, even some upside-down disco � is nothing short of refreshing.

Let it Die unfolds in two parts. The first side features Feist's own compositions, while the second contains various covers. The first song to greet the listener is "Gatekeeper", a discreet love-tale in which Feist's voice is accompanied only by her acoustic guitar, stripped of any unessential arrangements. The second track and first single, "Mushaboom", is by contrast musically complete, slowly adding a piano, backing vocals, and cushioned handclaps. Still, the music never steps on Feist's vocals, which boost the lightness and easiness of the tune. Two tracks later, the second single, "One Evening", shows yet another side of Feist, an almost sultry lounge love affair.

The theme of the album, as you might have guessed, is bittersweet (with sweet predominating) love. Feist's slippery soft voice earns comparisons with indie-folk singer/songwriters Chan Marshall, Sarah Harmer, and Erin Moran (A Girl Called Eddy), but she manages to make a niche of her own due to her openness to peculiar past icons. Her specific influences are better seen in her covers. She takes on Ron Sexsmith's sentimental and vulnerable "Secret Heart", turning it into brighter, sun-bleached folk-pop. Also covered is the Bee Gees' "Inside And Out", stripped of its disco kitsch, and "Now at Last", a quiet ballad written for Jazz/Bop singer Blossom Dearie by Bob Haymes (not to be mistaken for his brother Dick) in the 50s.

Despite Feist's own reluctance to accept the "French pop" tag, it's probably one of the most accurate, both for her felted voice and her carefree and delicate stance on love. Jane Birkin's impact on Feist's singing is noticeable throughout the record. Also present is one French cover, which changes depending on which version of the album you get. French and US releases have another Blossom Dearie cover in "Tout Doucement", a gently naive pop gem, while Canadians get Fran�oise Hardy's "L'amour Ne Dure Pas Toujours", a less original but more coherent choice. Brits get both, as well as another track called "Amourissima".

It's a tough call in the end, telling which side of the album is better. The first has Feist's competent compositions but lacks the adventuresome freshness of the covers, while the second part remains a sparse collection of efficient yet somewhat disparate covers and lacks some of the directness that makes the first songs more honest. It's the second side that contains the weakest moments: "Lonely Lonely" feels musically empty, while Feist's take on the traditional "When I Was a Young Girl" sees her getting a little too ambitious with her voice. Still, apart from that slight letdown, the originals and the covers are treated with the same attention both on the vocals and on the music. On that point, we must note the excellent contributions of Chilly Gonzales and Renaud Letang. The arrangements are mastered and mixed to support Feist's voice, espousing its very cushioned softness. They never overshadow the vocals or steal the show, but are both discreet and essential at some times and ambitious and glossy at others. Feist's music is never blunt or raw. It's occasionally simple, but is usually sweetly-coated, giving the whole album a strong, easygoing flow.

This second album by Leslie Feist officially proves that the singer and musician is worth more than collaborations here and there. Her mix of Parisian folk with old-style 50s and 60s pop delicacy is more than welcome into the musical neighborhood. It's a bit far from her debut, opening for the Ramones with her high-school band Placebo (nothing to do with the Placebo you know), and from the girl who recorded with Peaches under a less-than-respectable pseudonym, but who's to complain? Everything on this album is worth at least a nod (most of it is worth more), and that's something rare enough to be celebrated here.

Marc-Olivier LaBarre

Buy this album

Review: Feist - Let It Die

#1 Music@Murmurs

#2 new adventures

#3 Gigi

#4 new adventures

#5 mmmaria

#6 Lake Huron Day

0 user(s) are reading this topic