Feist – The Reminder Album + Free Download + Tickets Comp

She shivered through several failed attempts to record the birds chirping outside on the old stone patio, thwarted every time by the sounds of unexpected traffic (cars and airplanes) in the isolated area (later, a one-off effort outside a studio in Toronto's Danforth neighbourhood succeeded in capturing Canadian birdsong for folk ballad The Park).

And the songs came one after another, more than they had expected to finish in this short two week window. An album.

Brandy Alexander with it's sucker-punch melody tumbling over a kick drum heartbeat. The jangly Dusty In Memphis teen dream paean 1234. With perennial collaborator Gonzales, she came up with The Limit To Your Love, an ominous slow-burner in which Feist becomes Nico over hard-soul piano chords and Mo Tucker percussion. Live fave Sea Lion Woman, the traditional chant famously covered by Nina Simone, got propelled into the stratosphere with cell phone sounding synths, handclaps and a backing mini-gospel choir.

The shimmering, plaintive The Water immerses Feist's stunning vocals in layers of vibraphone and piano, letting haunted allegorical lyrics about stoic mountains, a clumsy and dangerous sea and little bone piles slowly emerge from the depths. Intuition unspools with fragile fingerpicked guitar, Feist playing call and response with the distant chorus of a crowd.

It's hard not to be floored by the staggering breadth and depth of the material on The Reminder. You can hear the sound of every facet of Feist- the punk kid from Calgary, the T.O. indie rock poster girl, the Parisian ex-pat who taps the cobblestone. The lost and the found- without the slightest bit of compromise.

It's Feist simply answering her own questions with questions, and giving in - as she sings so sweetly at the end of The Reminder - to "how her heart behaves."page << 1 2 3 4 >>