Feist @ The Metro (29/2/2008)

Leslie Feist is a very talented person and her show at the Metro was a wonderful showcase of the depth of her artistic tastes and musical skillz.

She seemed very warm to the Metro crowd (”better than Perth!”) and especially seemed to get on well with a contingent of Broken Social Scene fans who had somehow mostly congregated somewhere in the front to her left. She mentioned Kevin Drew’s “sweet as/s” rant yesterday as a random “twenty minute monologue” to giggles from those of us in the know and did a touching and unexpected solo cover of ‘Fucked Up Kid’ off ‘Spirit If…’

The renditions for a lot of the songs were very different from what they were on record and not in a bad way. Her voice was top notch and it was interesting to see her looping and layering her voice as backing tracks of ‘Honey Honey’ and ‘Sea Lion Woman’. She (and her band) stretched out both fast and slow numbers taking care to thoroughly explore and heighten new and existing dynamics in the music to engaged and enraptured coos of appreciation from the audience. ‘Sea Lion Woman’ was in particular very impressive especially when she stepped back from the stage and really belted it out the back end of the song on guitar with the rest of her band.

The main set ended with a one two punch of ‘1 2 3 4′ and ‘Mushaboom’, the latter of which rather surprisingly got a more hearty kick out of the audience (it’s all relative of course because ‘1 2 3 4′ still got one of the biggest cheers). They had people clapping along or jokingly put “under strict orders” from the lady of the show to provide backing harmonies. In fact audience participation and acknowledgement seemed to be a big part of the night. Whereas some solo shows tend to be entirely about the artist playing their poetry to an audience who as far as they’re concerned is to stand and listen, Feist’s show was all about the fun and giddy thrill of music as she egged on the audience and invited us in on the action. And what she giveth, she got back. She did play those songs she openly admits to not being crowd pleasers (such as a solo version of ‘Intuition’), which turned out to be unexpectedly awesome finishing up with the crowd again picking up backing duties at the end, unbidden at that, to thumbs up and encouragement from her band members who had originally come back out to do it.

She bantered with the crowd and this was also equally varied and fun — whether it be a light hearted rant about how foreign musicians always confuse cities with territories in Canada, or her hopeful/joking wish to play the Opera House next time she’s in town (”one of the smaller rooms with the comfortable seats”), or a rather dorky aside to an audience member about good hair straightening thingies. She added some extra verses about the dodgy-ness of technology and dropped the F-bomb early on when she realised the acoustic guitar for So Sorry wasn’t coming out of the speakers — not that she ever seemed truly annoyed, more bemused. In fact she seemed incredibly cheerful throughout the night and this sunny attitude was infectious especially when combined with such a great night of music and art.

The show was played in front of a giant white canvas sheet upon which were projected images from a little shadow act going on just offstage. The woman who did this was amazing. The show started out with a projection of a black outline of a lantern, which was unexpectedly picked up by giant shadow fingers which pulled it off stage… to Feist walking onto stage with an actual lantern before ducking behind a small white screen to give a crazed vocal performance to her dancing silhouette, like an iPod ad backlit with a flickering lantern.

This shadow theme continued in the background throughout the set as various slides and props were actively manipulated off stage with the music, whether it be simple like scattered shadow leaves blowing across, shadow bird twittering from one side of the screen to the other, or layering of different transparencies and changes in focus to the more complicated. ‘The Water’ had a “very cool” motif with clear rocks and flickering blue lights, ‘Sea Lion Woman’ had enormous kicking burlesque show cutout legs and red/orange lace which was pushed and pulled across the screen by giant hands which gave it a rather raunchy feel. ‘Honey Honey’ was my favourite as the backdrop was some sort of paint slapped onto a slide and where waves, a heart and a boat were drawn by fingers and fingernails before being all violently rubbed away. I’m going to stop there because I cannot describe them all and these descriptions don’t do them justice. There are a lot of different ideas going back there but the main thing that struck me is that this was one fucking clever idea that fit in well with the audiovisual theme of ‘The Reminder’, in fact maybe all of Feist’s solo work in general. The fact that it was all done live and by a single person off stage just heightened the real yet surreal feel of the show. It didn’t come across as cheap and felt incredibly interesting; something I feel wouldn’t have been as effective with computer graphics.

I enjoyed this show immensely, and I feel like it’s left an indelible mark on me. I felt that it was an artistic triumph and seemed like a very lucky glimpse into the world of a very talented individual.

PS. Fuck me dead the Metro was cold as an igloo.

Main set:
Safe And Secure
When I Was A Young Girl
So Sorry
My Moon My Man
The Park
Limit To Your Love
I Feel It All
How My Heart Behaves
Honey Honey
Fucked Up Kid
Open Window
Gatekeeper
Brandy Alexander
Inside And Out
The Water
1 2 3 4
Mushaboom

Encore:
Intuition
Sea Lion Woman
Let It Die

(Set list from the always-on-top-of-things Oceans Never Listen)

(Konrad: did not take photos inside because my arms had locked up from the immense cold)

By Jonathan Codfour.