helping the kids out of their coats.
Tuesday Spotlights are generally reserved for seasoned veterans, posing the opportunity for me to review their career through present day. Today marks a slight twist as the focus of the Spotlight falls on a girl with a bizarre history within music who stepped forward from a large group of musicians as they came into their own indie fame.
Leslie Feist was thrust in front of the onlooking musical public at an early age, winning a spot playing alongside The Ramones through a battle of the bands with her group Placebo. This was accomplished before she reached the age of 20, at which point she moved to Toronto and joined By Divine Right. Later she shared an apartment with Peaches and even joined her on stage as her alter-ego Bitch Lap-Lap, a sock-puppet- and aerobic outfit-wearing incompetent rapper. She toured Europe with Chilly Gonzales for two years and then co-founded Canada's tour-de-force Broken Social Scene.
This (as well as one solo disc, 1999's Monarch) was all preamble to the Fall 2004 release of Let It Die on BSS's own Arts & Crafts label. Word traveled relatively quickly and Interscope released the album in the U.S. the following Spring, with incredible distribution on it's side. The boys fell in love and the girls had a role model to use as a basis for singing simple melodic seductions. While some artists release singles worthy of remixes and collaborative versions, few (non hip-hop) artists can create entire albums so talked about, listened to and adored that they merit an entire album of remixes, but Let It Die was just that. Open Season was released by A&C earlier this year (still with no readily available distribution in the U.S.) and contains four new versions of "Mushaboom," two of "Gatekeeper," two of "One Evening," and a few new unreleased songs.
Feist's website describes the music of Let It Die as "very much a voice album in close up. Carefully pieced together around timeless simple melodies, the album forms the missing link between ye old folk (storytelling,) the Brill building era (the quest for the hook,) doo-wop (melody and minor key moods) and minimal modern pop arrangements." Feist is beaming with soul, which is in itself complex given the subdued nature in which she emits it. The power of a profound truth whispered over the crackle of a fireplace sticks with you and where most remixes (let alone remix albums) can't even hold up the already free-standing original, Open Season does so gracefully with complimentary flourishes.
I agree that Broken Social Scene seems to better fit the no one is awake Spotlight profile, and that may be the case (in the near future), but I just got Open Season in the mail today and am thrilled.
Feist's "Let It Die"
& "Secret Heart"
from Let It Die
Feist's "Inside+Out (Apostle of Hustle UnMix Live at the BBC)"
& "Mushaboom (Postal Service Mix)"
from Open Season
Watch Feist's video for "Mushaboom" (directed by Patrick Daughters), "One Evening" (sexy dancing), and her performance on Jimmy Kimmel here. Click "videos" obviously.
BONUS: The Kings of Convenience's "Know-How" (featuring Feist)
from Riot on an Empty Street
BONUS II: See the finale of my Saddle Creek week for Bright Eyes' "Mushaboom" cover.
Leslie Feist was thrust in front of the onlooking musical public at an early age, winning a spot playing alongside The Ramones through a battle of the bands with her group Placebo. This was accomplished before she reached the age of 20, at which point she moved to Toronto and joined By Divine Right. Later she shared an apartment with Peaches and even joined her on stage as her alter-ego Bitch Lap-Lap, a sock-puppet- and aerobic outfit-wearing incompetent rapper. She toured Europe with Chilly Gonzales for two years and then co-founded Canada's tour-de-force Broken Social Scene.
This (as well as one solo disc, 1999's Monarch) was all preamble to the Fall 2004 release of Let It Die on BSS's own Arts & Crafts label. Word traveled relatively quickly and Interscope released the album in the U.S. the following Spring, with incredible distribution on it's side. The boys fell in love and the girls had a role model to use as a basis for singing simple melodic seductions. While some artists release singles worthy of remixes and collaborative versions, few (non hip-hop) artists can create entire albums so talked about, listened to and adored that they merit an entire album of remixes, but Let It Die was just that. Open Season was released by A&C earlier this year (still with no readily available distribution in the U.S.) and contains four new versions of "Mushaboom," two of "Gatekeeper," two of "One Evening," and a few new unreleased songs.
Feist's website describes the music of Let It Die as "very much a voice album in close up. Carefully pieced together around timeless simple melodies, the album forms the missing link between ye old folk (storytelling,) the Brill building era (the quest for the hook,) doo-wop (melody and minor key moods) and minimal modern pop arrangements." Feist is beaming with soul, which is in itself complex given the subdued nature in which she emits it. The power of a profound truth whispered over the crackle of a fireplace sticks with you and where most remixes (let alone remix albums) can't even hold up the already free-standing original, Open Season does so gracefully with complimentary flourishes.
I agree that Broken Social Scene seems to better fit the no one is awake Spotlight profile, and that may be the case (in the near future), but I just got Open Season in the mail today and am thrilled.
Feist's "Let It Die"
& "Secret Heart"
from Let It Die
Feist's "Inside+Out (Apostle of Hustle UnMix Live at the BBC)"
& "Mushaboom (Postal Service Mix)"
from Open Season
Watch Feist's video for "Mushaboom" (directed by Patrick Daughters), "One Evening" (sexy dancing), and her performance on Jimmy Kimmel here. Click "videos" obviously.
BONUS: The Kings of Convenience's "Know-How" (featuring Feist)
from Riot on an Empty Street
BONUS II: See the finale of my Saddle Creek week for Bright Eyes' "Mushaboom" cover.
Listen Well posted this around 6:11 PM
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