Feist in The Times!
Posted 7/4/2007 by Admin
By Ann Powers, Times Staff Writer
Red dress, red stockings, red guitar: Leslie Feist was dressed for
conquest Friday at the Wiltern, on the final night of a long North
American tour. The Canadian singer-songwriter, whose third album, "The
Reminder," has taken her career from the sprouting stage to full flower,
showed no anxiety or bashfulness leading her all-male band through a
crowd-pleasing set; this was her victory lap, and she welcomed everyone
along.
Feist, who records under her surname only, is basking in that
universally lovable quality that sometimes surfaces in rising stars: Her
self-esteem glows outward, making everyone else in the room feel good
about themselves. Feist's new album followed the quiet craft of her 2004
breakthrough, "Let It Die," and it's proved that Feist will not confine
herself to chic prettiness. With its wide palette and jubilant
straightforwardness, "The Reminder" is a bit like Carole King's
"Tapestry," though more modest and with fewer immortal hooks.
At the Wiltern, Feist and her expert but humble band stressed the energy
and fun of her music sprightly rockers "1234" and "My Moon My Man"
became sharper and brighter, and melancholy ballads steered clear of
mawkishness. Instruments including glockenspiel and muted trumpet were
prominently featured, but Feist also used effects pedals to loop her
voice or guitar, and a ton of reverb enhanced her vocals, especially
when she stood on the piano to sing "Lover's Spit," a song by her former
band Broken Social Scene, accompanied by that band's co-founder Kevin
Drew.
Feist's voice, even more than the average singer's, is the wellspring of
her appeal. Her alto sounds a bit like that muted trumpet it's a
gleaming but slightly subdued sound, stemming in part from damage her
vocal cords sustained when she was a teenage punk singer.
At the Wiltern, her most spine-tingling vocal moments recalled singers
as diverse as Nicolette Larson and Youssou N'Dour without seeming
derivative.
That beautiful, dented instrument can also be Feist's downfall.
Something about her diction makes her words difficult to understand, and
the undertow of her gentle vibrato can lull a listener away from
attentiveness. She's growing exponentially but needs to keep pushing
herself beyond the prettiness so accessible to her.
This night, however, was for relaxing. At set's end, as Drew and opening
act Grizzly Bear joined in a ragged chorus of the Nina Simone favorite
"See Line Woman" (retitled "Sealion" on "The Reminder"), Feist bopped
and shimmied in sweet abandon. A woman dressed in red singing about a
woman dressed in red, she vaulted into her own mythology.
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![The Reminder [Deluxe EP]](http://cache.interscope.com/images/local/150/9fe029a3-a6bb-49ac-aef9-6f2e66e180b9.jpg)
