Inventive evening of extraordinary artistry
Feist Shepherd’s Bush Empire
If there ever was a queen of the twee movement – that hipster aesthetic that started in the Noughties and celebrates all things vintage, whimsical, craft-based and innocent – then it was Leslie Feist. The Canadian singer’s 2007 song 1234, with its kooky, banjo-flecked arrangement and childlike lyrics, was even used by Apple in an ipad Nano advert, which both perfectly dates it and tells you all you need to know about the generation-defining qualities the song was deemed to contain. Feist’s rendition of the song on Sesame Street in 2008 with Elmo and Telly Monster, as they all counted to four, may yet come to be seen by cultural historians as twee’s Woodstock.
Which raises an interesting question: how do you shed that tag? In Feist’s case, you go downbeat. Her 2011 record Metals was a sombre affair, while the follow-up, this year’s Pleasure, is a stark album, full of space and spare arrangements. And at her first UK show in over five years – part of a three-night mini residency at an all-seated Shepherd’s Bush Empire in west London – she played the new record in its entirety.
If the night was meant to finally reset Feist as a brooding, raw, transatlantic, mid-nineties-era PJ Harvey, it was only partially successful. And the show was all the better for it. The new songs may be skeletal on record but live they were beautifully fleshed out by her band, their atmospherics enriched and – where applicable – their uplifting qualities magnified tenfold.
I Wish I Didn’t Miss You is fragile on record. Here, it was thickened with ghostly harmonising and a low synth rumble that shook the century-old Empire to its core. Feist, wearing an elaborate pink dress, has turned 40 since her last album (haven’t we all), and songs such as Get Not High, Get Not Low celebrate stability. The stage went dark after Century only
‘If the night was meant to reset Feist, it was only partially successful and the show was all the better for it’
to reveal Jarvis Cocker emerging through the dry ice for the song’s spoken-word coda.
This was an inventive evening full of unexpected joy. Too many gigs these days are overly produced, sung by artists who don’t want to be there, and played in venues chosen for their revenue-raising potential rather than their appropriateness to the artistic objective. Not this. We witnessed extraordinary musicianship and felt a genuine connection.
This week, Apple announced that it is discontinuing the ipod Nano. Feist’s future is far more secure.