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| Allmusic Biography : Leslie Feist -- best known simply as Feist -- was a respected member of the Canadian alternative music community before becoming an international pop sensation with the success for her albums Let It Die and The Reminder. Feist was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada on February 13, 1976. Her father Harold is a respected abstract painter and academic, while her mother Lyn is also a visual artist who works in ceramics. Feist was a baby when her parents divorced, and her mother relocated to Regina, Saskatchewan with young Leslie and her older brother Ben. Growing up in Regina and later Calgary, Leslie was a good student who hoped to become a writer, and developed an interest in music after joining a youth choir. When Leslie was 15, her creative ambitions took a sharp turn when she joined a Calgary-based punk band, Placebo (no relation to the later U.K.-based neo-glam outfit) in 1991. In 1993, Placebo won a Battle of the Bands that earned them a spot at a rock festival opening for the Ramones, and in 1995 the group would release an EP, Dont Drink the Bathwater. However, Feist was an inexperienced vocalist who had trouble keeping up with the groups powerful stage volume, and in 1996 she left Placebo when she began to experience damage to her vocal cords. Feist left Calgary for Toronto, and was advised by a doctor not to sing for six months. As she settled in her new hometown, Feist used her downtime from singing to work on her instrumental abilities; she taught herself guitar and began writing songs using a four-track recording setup, and also picked up the bass and played for a spell in the band Noahs Arkweld. In 1998, she became rhythm guitarist with the indie rock outfit By Divine Right, and appeared on their 1999 album Bless This Mess. During her time with By Divine Right, Feist began piecing together the songs shed been writing and released her first album, Monarch (Lay Down Your Jeweled Head). Most copies of the disc were sold at the merch table at shows, and it received little notice at the time. After leaving By Divine Right, Feist shared an apartment with a fellow independent musician, Merrill Nisker. As Nisker began shaping her lascivious stage persona Peaches, Feist became part of the act, performing with sock puppets on-stage, providing backing vocals, and singing on Peaches debut album, The Teaches of Peaches. (She would also contribute vocals to Peaches 2006 album Impeach My Bush.) After touring the U.K. with Peaches, in 2001 Feist returned home to Toronto and was invited to join the indie rock band and musicians collective Broken Social Scene by founder Kevin Drew. After touring with Broken Social Scene, she contributed vocals to their 2002 album You Forgot It in People, which earned rave reviews as well as a Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year. Later in 2002, Feist left Toronto for Paris, France, and with the help of producers and instrumentalists Chilly Gonzales (whom she had met while working with Peaches) and Renaud Letang (best known for his work with Manu Chao), she began work on her second solo effort. Released in 2004, Let It Die was a strikingly accomplished fusion of pop, folk, indie, electronic, and Latin influences, which provided an impressive showcase for Feists cool but powerful vocal stylings. The album won enthusiastic reviews and impressive sales by indie standards, while the track "Mushaboom" became a successful single; Let It Die won the Juno Award for Best Alternative Rock Album, while Feist took home the trophy for Best New Artist. As Feist worked on her third album, in 2006 she released a collection called Open Season, which featured remixes, collaborative recordings, and other odds and ends. While Let It Die made Feist into a major indie success story, 2007s The Reminder turned her into a bona fide pop star; it entered the Canadian album charts at number two, and debuted at number 16 in the United States. The album was already selling well when Apple used the song "1234" in a TV spot for the iPod Nano; the commercial seemingly did as much to sell the song as it did the audio player, and pushed "1234" into the Top Ten of the U.S. singles charts on the strength of paid downloads alone. "My Moon, My Man" and "I Feel It All" also fared well as singles, while The Reminder earned Feist a gold record in the United States and sold over a million copies internationally, as well as winning her another five Juno Awards. The success of The Reminder led to a number of interesting collaborations for Feist: she appeared on Stephen Colberts 2008 holiday special A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All, sang a duet with Jeff Tweedy on Wilcos 2009 release Wilco: The Album, contributed to a Skip Spence tribute album curated by Beck (it also featured Wilco, Jamie Lidell, and James Gadson), appeared in a short film directed by Kevin Drew titled The Water, and performed a rewritten version of "1234" on Sesame Street with the Muppets. She also reunited with Broken Social Scene for a handful of live appearances, one of which was shot by director Bruce McDonald for the film This Movie Is Broken. However, while Feist was enjoying working with others, she put a self-imposed moratorium on creating new music of her own for several years, instead working with filmmaker Anthony Seck on a documentary about the recording of The Reminder and her subsequent concert tour, entitled Look at What the Light Did Now. In 2011, Feist returned with a new album, Metals, a low-key set that was well received but noticeably less poppy than The Reminder. During subsequent years, she kept busy while not releasing much Feist material: she wrote a song for one of the Twilight movies ("Fire in the Water"), made an appearance in the 2011 film The Muppets, collaborated on a split single with the witty heavy metal band Mastodon for Record Store Day 2012, performed at the tenth-anniversary festival of the Arts & Crafts label in 2013, and made appearances on recordings by friends including Mocky and Kevin Drew. When Feist re-emerged with her fifth studio album and first in five-and-a-half years, she explored themes of various emotional states. Pleasure arrived in the spring of 2017 along with a schedule of international music festival appearances. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 7 Title: Monarch: Lay Your Jewelled Head Down Released: 1999-09-12 Tracks: 10 Duration: 41:47 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 It’s Cool to Love Your Family (03:54) 2 Onliest (04:03) 3 La sirena (04:28) 4 One Year A.D. (04:50) 5 Monarch (05:10) 6 That’s What I Say, It’s Not What I Mean (03:35) 7 Flight #303 (02:48) 8 Still True (03:52) 9 The Mast (04:43) 10 New Torch (04:19) |
 | Album: 2 of 7 Title: Let It Die Released: 2004-05-18 Tracks: 11 Duration: 37:52 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Gatekeeper (02:16) 2 Mushaboom (03:44) 3 Let It Die (02:55) 4 One Evening (03:36) 5 Leisure Suite (04:07) 6 Lonely Lonely (04:10) 7 When I Was a Young Girl (03:08) 8 Secret Heart (03:49) 9 Inside and Out (04:17) 10 Tout doucement (02:31) 11 Now at Last (03:15) |
| Let It Die : Allmusic album Review : Somewhere in between living with Peaches, playing guitar with By Divine Right, rapping with Chilly Gonzales, and singing with Broken Social Scene and Apostle of Hustle, Canadian songstress Feist started a solo career. Following up 1999s self-released Monarch, Let It Die was recorded in Paris between 2002 and 2003. The romance of the City of Lights glows throughout as a combination of folk, bossa nova, jazz-pop, and indie rock finds its place among the 11-track song list. Shell woo you with her sultry vocals throughout, a delicate and sweet voice that feels cozy. From the warm shimmy and shake of "Gatekeeper" and "Mushaboom" to the classy R&B grooves of "One Evening" and "Leisure Suite," Feist explores various musical worlds without getting lost. She reels you into different soundscapes and its an exciting adventure. Dare yourself to imagine Patrice Rushen, Ivys Dominique Durand, and Astrud Gilberto in a group, and thats basically the beginning threads of Let It Die. Feist never holds back sonically or musically; however, Let It Die isnt an extravagant first album. Shes playful with her design and the overall composition flows nicely. Feist has varied styles and sounds just right, and thats what makes Let It Die the secret treasure that it is. Her rendition of Ron Sexsmiths "Secret Heart" is a cinematic outing for a dewy spring day. The Bee Gees "Inside and Out" gets a foxy makeover for what is probably the albums finest moment. Feists soft touch makes magic on these particular covers, and the bittersweet loveliness of Blossom Dearies "Now at Last" ties it all together to make Let It Die a storybook romance. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 7 Title: Open Season: Remixes and Collabs Released: 2006-04-25 Tracks: 15 Duration: 1:00:28 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 One Evening (Gonzales solo piano) (02:22) 2 Inside+Out (Apostle of Hustle unmix live at the BBC) (03:33) 3 Mushaboom (Mocky remix) (05:03) 4 Gatekeeper (One Room One Hour mix) (02:44) 5 Lonely Lonely (Frisbee’d mix) (06:24) 6 Mushaboom (K‐os mix) (03:30) 7 Snow Lion (03:38) 8 Tout doucement (02:31) 9 The Simple Story (03:55) 10 Lovertits (02:44) 11 Mushaboom (Postal Service mix) (03:35) 12 Gatekeeper (Do Right mix) (05:27) 13 One Evening (remixed by VV) (04:02) 14 When I Was a Young Girl (VV mix) (05:28) 15 Mushaboom (VV mix) (05:26) |
 | Album: 4 of 7 Title: The Reminder Released: 2007-04-23 Tracks: 13 Duration: 50:06 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 So Sorry (03:12) 2 I Feel It All (03:39) 3 My Moon My Man (03:48) 4 The Park (04:34) 5 The Water (04:46) 6 Sealion (03:39) 7 Past in Present (02:54) 8 The Limit to Your Love (04:21) 9 1234 (03:03) 10 Brandy Alexander (03:36) 11 Intuition (04:36) 12 Honey Honey (03:27) 13 How My Heart Behaves (04:26) |
| The Reminder : Allmusic album Review : When Leslie Feist released her breakthrough album Let It Die, she became an indie icon almost instantly. Her pretty, sometimes melancholic love songs, her clear campfire voice, 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 Feists 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 thats what The Reminder, like Let It Die, really is: a collection of warm, lazy music made for those summer afternoons that creep into evening before you realize it. Feists voice is cleanly emotive as she sings lines like "Theres 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"), crooning confidently but with a weakness, a fragility that comes out during the most sentimental lines. But this can also be a drawback. At times, she borders on a kind of sappiness that seems better suited to Top 40 Matrix-produced pop songs than hipster-blog accolades. "We dont 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 tracks 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 its based), with its repeated phrase "Hes my Brandy Alexander" (juxtaposed with "Im his Brandy Alexander") and "Goes down easy," as Motown-esque harmonies jump in to emphasize that last word. Why Feist, who displays her lyrical skills in tracks like "The Water," "My Moon My Man," and her reinterpretation of Nina Simones "See-Line Woman" (incorrectly identified as "Sea Lion Woman"), "Sealion," believes it necessary to include such saccharine lines is confusing, and hints at the suspicion that while she undoubtedly enjoyed herself during the making The Reminder, she wasnt really challenging herself with the process. 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 couldve made -- and does it well, which means that the album does end up a consistently good listen. But it also means that its not much of a departure from what shes 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 its still unclear if shell be able to deliver it. | ||
 | Album: 5 of 7 Title: Look at What the Light Did Now Released: 2010-12-07 Tracks: 13 Duration: 58:41 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Look at What the Light Did Now (03:59) 2 Limit to Your Love (05:22) 3 When I Was a Young Girl (04:55) 4 My Moon My Man (03:41) 5 Secret Heart (04:40) 6 Strangers (02:34) 7 So Sorry (03:46) 8 Where Can I Go Without You? (03:37) 9 Intuition (04:33) 10 The Water (07:04) 11 Sea Lion Woman (03:35) 12 1234 (06:39) 13 Look at What the Light Did Now (04:09) |
 | Album: 6 of 7 Title: Metals Released: 2011-09-30 Tracks: 12 Duration: 50:07 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 The Bad in Each Other (04:45) 2 Graveyard (04:18) 3 Caught a Long Wind (04:55) 4 How Come You Never Go There (03:25) 5 A Commotion (03:53) 6 The Circle Married the Line (03:23) 7 Bittersweet Melodies (03:57) 8 Anti‐Pioneer (05:33) 9 Undiscovered First (04:59) 10 Cicadas and Gulls (03:16) 11 Comfort Me (04:04) 12 Get It Wrong Get It Right (03:39) |
| Metals : Allmusic album Review : With Metals, Feist responds to the surprise success of 2007’s The Reminder with a whisper, not a bang. She treads lightly through a series of disjointed torch songs and smoky pop/rock numbers, singing most of the songs in a soft, gauzy alto, as though she’s afraid of waking some sort of slumbering beast. Whenever the tempo picks up, so does Feist’s desire to keep things weird, with songs like “A Commotion” pitting pizzicato strings against a half-chanted, half-shouted refrain performed by an army of male singers. But Metals does its best work at a slower speed, where Feist can stretch her vocals across fingerplucked guitar arpeggios and piano chords like cotton. “Cicadas and Gulls,” with its simple melodies and pastoral ambience, rides the same summer breeze as Iron & Wine, and “Anti-Pioneer” breaks down the blues into its sparsest parts, retaining little more than a sparse drumbeat and guitar until the second half, where strings briefly swoon into the picture like an Ennio Morricone movie soundtrack. They’re gone after 30 seconds, though, leaving things as quiet as they began. Like the rest of the subdued track list, “Anti-Pioneer” is unlikely to find itself featured in an iPod commercial, meaning Feist’s days as a provider of hip, trendy TV jingles may be over. Still, there’s a soft-spoken power to Metals, even if its songs are more liquid and atmospheric than the title suggests. | ||
 | Album: 7 of 7 Title: Pleasure Released: 2017-04-28 Tracks: 11 Duration: 53:33 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Pleasure (04:45) 2 I Wish I Didn’t Miss You (04:18) 3 Get Not High, Get Not Low (04:57) 4 Lost Dreams (05:18) 5 Any Party (05:22) 6 A Man Is Not His Song (04:41) 7 The Wind (04:35) 8 Century (05:53) 9 Baby Be Simple (06:21) 10 I’m Not Running Away (03:24) 11 Young Up (03:54) |
| Pleasure : Allmusic album Review : For Feist to begin her first record in six years with a pregnant pause is a pretty bold move. The teasing, introductory silence is answered with lead single "Pleasure," which refuses to play to expectation. Much like her last record, Metals, eschewed her reputation as a creator of indie pop smashes like "1234" and "Mushaboom" through a series of moodily atmospheric pieces, Pleasure is yet another progression. The title track is a lusty take on raw, bluesy rock that echoes PJ Harvey at her most mischievous and playful. Similarly, the follow-up single, "Century," is full of staccato punkish swagger that leads into a rousing and earnest chorus: "Someone who will lead you to someone/Who will lead you to someone/Who will lead you to the one/At the end of the century." Theres barely time to digest this shift before Jarvis Cockers dulcet tones appear, the effect simultaneously humorous and dramatic. But nothing is quite as alarming as the way the song ends: like someone cut the power, lights out. The unceremonious conclusion tells you a lot about the record as a whole and Leslie Feists rejection of neat, contented endings. Structurally, Pleasure is consistently surprising, as compositions lead you to expect a certain progression, only to veer wildly in another direction. By comparison, the unabashedly romantic "Any Party" is all the more beguiling for its simplicity. Led by an acoustic guitar played loosely and passionately, she croons "You know Id leave any party for you/Sugar I got no question it was the right thing to do." The production is raw, but not in a crude sense; rather, the rounded echo and persistent hiss make it sound like shes performing these songs in your living room. The lack of polish lends the record intimacy, warmth, and immediacy that make tracks like the heart-sore "I Wish I Didnt Miss You" all the more affecting. Vocally, Feist has never been in more dexterous form. She delivers the desperate lines "I felt some certainty that you must have died/Because how could I live if youre still alive" with a disarming intensity; on the beautifully bruised "Baby Be Simple" she sounds exposed like never before via whispered tones. Time and desire weigh heavily on the record. But ruminations on past, present, and future are left bereft of narrative closure, as she sings "A man is not his song/And Im not a story." Thats not to say she doesnt understand longing for tidy summations. The most stirring moment on the record is the call and response between Feist and choir: "The man is not his song/Though we all want to sing along/We all heard those old melodies/Like theyre singing right to me" -- within which she reflects the powerful need to make connections, and our attempts to cheat mortality through the permanence of art. Feist has made her sex-and-death record, and in turn she has created her boldest statement yet. Its messy, confusing, thrilling, and of course, filled with pleasure. | ||