Posted 4 years, 7 months ago in the early morning by moreno
i decided to write this post because i got sick of asking everyone “have you heard the new Feist album yet?” seriously tho, have you? well if you have you’ll agree how good it is. real good. if you haven’t then you need to, immediately. its called Let it Die. the first time i heard this album, by the time i got to the second song (the amazing Mushaboom) i was completely blown away trying to find out why i had not heard this sooner. it is completely anachronistic and yet makes perfect sense. man this cd is good.
the album is half originals, half covers but theyre done so well. she even covers the Bee Gees! (dont even knock the Bee Gees, and listening to Feist’s cover you’ll remember how great the Gibb brothers are.) if there was any justice Ms. Feist would be up on that stage there with an arm full of grammys instead of that brown nosing “Norah Jones”. Then again if there was any justice a giant meteor would crash into earth landing directly on top of the auditorium where the Grammys are being held, destroying all the statues and the industry idiots who think Green Day are brilliant because they write the same songs but this time theyre about George Bush. Yea Billie Joe, where were you in 2000? thats right, still making farting jokes and trying to walk down the street in Berkeley without people yelling “you sell out bitch!”. but i digress…..
theres a great Feist acoustic in-studio from KCRW here . its a great watch if you can stand watching Nic Harcourt spout his nonsense while wearing a spiderman shirt. that guy’s getting too big for his britches, someone needs to take him down a peg. a WHOLE peg. “Morning Becomes Eclectic” my eye. it should be called “Morning Becomes UKlectic”. there’s more music than stuff coming out of the Britain, Nick. yes we know you love your country which is why you left it, but seriously no one wants to listen to Travis anymore, even if you call them “Keane”. ah, but i digress…
it turns out Ms. Feist is a card carrying member of Broken Social Scene although she’s not one of the core members. she also used to be roomates with Peaches. her collaborater on this album, Chilly Gonzalez, is Peaches’ DJ. Feist is Canadian but she moved to paris to record the album and it definitely shows. she’s even making up words to describe her singing style! dig:
Leslie Feist has at least one thing in common with Mick Fleetwood, drummer of Fleetwood Mac. The tie that binds this unlikely pair is the term “jhai” — a made-up word coined years ago by Feist and her old Toronto crew (Chilly Gonzales, Peaches, Mocky, Taylor Savvy — all of whom have since relocated to Europe). Jhai (rhymes with hay) was their word to describe an empty musical performance, and it was revived when Feist was recording her latest solo album, Let It Die.
For instance, if a song is really sad, she explains, it’s a bit melodramatic to sing it in musical theatre style, really broken-hearted sad — it’s a lazy way to do it. It’s more interesting to perform that sad song with no expression and let instrumentation and beautiful arrangements fill that space left open by the performer.
“You can add all the drama using instruments that don’t innately have those qualities,” Feist says. “Like the drumming in Fleetwood Mac is jhai — it’s just doing what it needs to do.”
“There’s a reason it’s so effective — that the characters are animals. It simplifies everything down to the evil fox and the innocent rabbit and the good lamb,” she says. “If they were actual people with any kind of detail connected to them, the archetype would be lost.”
The anonymous is actually more universal, she insists.
“When you take away the details of your own story, it leaves room for people to relate more than if you’re laying out your diary entry — having a narrator’s view instead of being right in the mire.”
dude the woman just name dropped Fleetwood Mac! she had me at hello. “evil fox and the innocent rabbit and the good lamb”?? This female is tripping! like i said, she had me at hello. actually she’s never said hello to me but not a day goes by that i dont dream of the moment when she does.
anyway if youre in LA she’s playing at the Troubadour on 9/16. i might go but dont expect me to say hello..i’ll be “occupied”. she’s also playing on the 14th and 15th here in NYC. she might be in SD but, really, who cares? BUY THIS ALBUM
ah ah ah ah…staying alive…staying alive…..ah ah ah ah………
you have a thing for the BeeGee’s eh?
Fuck, dude, you’re complaining about Nic Harcourt? Count your blessing M, ’cause at least you don’t have the fucking annoying jerk that is John Aielli–he’s the morning music show guy in Austin’s KUT radio. His show Eklecticos, which is long overdue for a meteor to land at the KUT studios is the worst music show. But for some reason, people still fucking listen to his tripe. Seriously, man, how many times can I stand listening to five different covers of a Radiohead song?! I was already falling asleep during Phillip Glass’ cover when he goes off about music he doesn’t even know about. At least Harcourt knows his music, Aielli doesn’t know shit that when he has good artists in the studio, he alienates them by yappin’ about himself. Give me Harcourt any day. By the way, thanks for Feist, I’ll look her up. Bee Gees are great man.
Yeah, I agree, the new Feist album sucks!!
I’m diggin it aight….but I like her better along side Kings of Convenience’s “Riot on an Empty Street” – which for the record, hasn’t gotten old since I bought it last summer. Yes, I purchased it for around 15 odd dollars at a store Oso. I can’t help supporting the industry. And that’s why I only have fifty dollars in my account. But only after borrowing some from my mama.
Anyway…feist. About 3 years ago, I didn’t have any love for female vocalists… it’s not that I didn’t try, but I just wasn’t feeling them. But now I got some Frou Frou, Mirah, Stars, and others and I’m giving them mad love.
Good music to cook pancakes too. I hope I don’t get over it quick like I did with CocoRosie.
You should check out EMC’s new mix. Free music is good music. And his is good anyways.
Ray Ray,
Set Yourself On Fire is still my favorite album of the year.
Revaz, hey, if you dig Mirah, you should check out Wolf Colonel or Jason Anderson. That dude’s music rocks, or The Microphones, The Blow, and Mirah’s new record is good. If I continue sharing my music collection, you’ll be hearing most of these musicans too.
Os, Set Yourself on Fire is fucking awesome. I suggest you hear their last record, Heart. I was very close to adding a track on my new mix but I’m restricted with a busted iBook.
I’m itching to share some of my hip-hop, latin alternative, and maybe weirder pop stuff. My girlfriend asked me the other day, “Hey, where’s Fantastic Plastic Machine? Pizzacato Five?”
shame, shame.
uhh..err.. Did I already mention The Game? You want to talk about great music, The Game is your man!!
That pretty much sums up my music collection at the moment.
Oso & EMC,
Yeah, both “Set Yourself on Fire” & “Heart” are tremendous.
‘Your ex-lover is dead’ is my fave track off the latest Stars. One fo the best show’s that we rocked to Oso…the Casbah never dissapoints, especially when you are buying me drinks. I think I still owe you from that night. But now’s not a good time to hit me up. Damn, I love talking about my monetary problems in comments. I dig The Microphones too EMC.
oops…I meant the title track, “Set yourself on Fire” is my fave. I love those first few lines of that track.
I’m with Oso on this, that Set Yourself on Fire is my favorite album this year. Although, E’s new record, Blinking Lights & Other Revelations is right up there too. Or Quasimoto’s record, and I even dig that new Dizzie Rascal (although, not entirely)…I just wished I had better Latin alternative selection…
Rivers,
Completely agreed. That was a fun night at the Casbah. You only owe me hugs. First track is amazing. Especially if you’ve ever forgotten an ex-girlfriend’s name, which I of course have.
EMC,
This year’s quasimoto just didn’t do it for me. Maybe I need to start smoking weed again.
[...] Many months later and the P-bomb dropped was dropped. Things were never the same. I got a hold of their album. it did not have the immediate impace their live show did…i was unimpressed and mildly annoyed. Around the same time i started hearing a song on college radio called Able by another Brooklyn band called The National. I checked out the rest of their album, and i took to it immediately. I then began to read about a girl named Leslie Feist and i checked out her album. The first two songs and I could not stop thinking about how I had not heard of something so gorgeous before. It might have been because the album had not been officially released yet. how i got a copy i’ll never know. anyway, this post isnt about feist, because this one was. [...]