by LORRAINE CARPENTER
"Today, I'm in Denver," says Feist, "yesterday, I woke up in Germany, four days ago I was in Toronto and the day before that I'd been in New York. This is what a week is like for me."
The international success of Feist's Let It Die - an album plotted out in airports, after all - has hoisted the Calgary-born singer from all-purpose backup musician to world-renowned and respected chanteuse. Between the intimate charm of her voice, the sleek, breezy arrangements of guitar, piano, percussion and horns, and the bittersweet portraits she paints of lovelorn urban life with imaginary escape hatches, the record has crossed borders, formats, demographics and expectations, taking root in both the indie rock realm where Feist cut her teeth and the unexplored territory of adult contemporary.
Let It Die, the follow-up to Feist's under-the-radar 1999 debut, Monarch, was released in May, 2004, by Toronto indie imprint Arts & Crafts. The album grew from experimental songwriting sessions with fellow Canadian Chilly Gonzales, who played piano on the finished product, co-wrote three songs and arranged all but two. The process began during Feist's tours playing guitar and singing backup with Gonzales, whose sleazy, smartass persona became a cult phenomenon in Europe, alongside his sister act, electropunk queen Peaches. Feist also performed with Peaches, as a faux-Spanish character called Bitch Lap-Lap, who wore aerobics outfits and rapped through a sock puppet - about as far a cry from Feist's blasé bohemian image as possible.
More recently, Feist has contributed vocals to albums by Norway's Kings of Convenience as well as Arthur H and Jane Birkin, the latter two a result of her high profile in her adopted hometown, Paris. By far, Feist's best known work outside her solo sphere is with Toronto-based supergroup Broken Social Scene, featuring fellow alumni from her first successful band, By Divine Right. Broken Social Scene's 2002 album, You Forgot It in People, won the Best Alternative Album Juno (two years before Feist's Let It Die did the same) and elevated them to international, albeit indie, stardom. The long-awaited follow-up to that landmark record - tentatively titled Windsurfing Nation, featuring vocals by Ms. Leslie Feist - should see the light this fall.
As for her next LP, Feist says there are enough embryos of songs in her head to begin recording around Christmas, when her epic world tour will come to a close. Ahead of her Jazz Festival performance, which promises a preview of those new songs, the Mirror spoke to Feist about her whirlwind lifestyle and the view from the stage.
Mirror: Last time we spoke, you were concerned about how your record would be received in Canada. Then you won a Juno. How does it feel?
Feist: Well, I'd never spent a minute of my life thinking, "Maybe one day I'll have a Juno." It was so not on my radar in the world I was inhabiting, but it was a great homecoming. I hadn't seen my family for months and months and then I brought my mom to the ceremony and there were a bunch of my friends from Broken Social Scene and Arts & Crafts all around. That was a nice way to come home.
M: So after winning an Alternative Juno, you've been nominated for a MuchMusic Video Award alongside Celine Dion, Shania Twain -
F: (laughs) Yeah, my compadres, my peers.
M: It must be strange, but I guess it reflects your broad appeal in Canada.
F: I see that everywhere, actually. With each gig, it's like throwing the dice - is it gonna be the moms or is it gonna be the daughters, is it gonna be the sons or the boyfriends or the girlfriends? Every night is different.
M: But every night is good.
F: Well, Saskatchewan's another story. Last time I played, there was like 30 people at the dollar-a-pint university night. My grandma came and I was barely audible over the pinball machines and screaming, tube-top-wearing girls - my poor grandma in the middle of that! But as far as the rest of the country goes, I was pretty thrilled.
Blue-haired ladies and blue-haired punks
M: Do you adjust your set list or alter your performance, depending on who happens to be in front of you?
F: I don't know if it's the Canadian in me, but there's always been a little bit of trying to please everybody. With older crowds, I used to shy away from certain parts of the show. I would think, "It's my grandma out there, I don't wanna scare my grandma!" It's been better for me to make the show what it is and do what that is every night.
M: What are some examples of extremely different places you've played outside Canada?
F: Well, in Malmö, Sweden, I played in a squat community in a big hall in the middle of a field, and the next night I was in Copenhagen in a theatre that was probably three or four hundred years old and every inch of it was covered in gold or red brocade and chandeliers. The Malmö night amps you up like a punk rock show, and, the night after, you would want to be sombre in this environment, but I decided to maintain altitude at both shows and not leave it up to the audience to determine what kind of gig I'm gonna play.
M: You've had the most success in France. I imagine your live experiences there are more routine.
F: Actually, in a way, France is even more extreme. From night to night, it would be punks - literally, people on tables throwing shit, jumping up and down with their fists in the air, singing along to "Let It Die," which is a ballad - (hollering) "LET IT DIE!" Then, the next night, there'd be chairs all around the stage and people with white hair with their hands on their laps clutching their handbags in a little old town in the middle of France where, I suppose, the radio station that played my songs was the old-person radio station. Maybe the town before, it was the college radio station. There's this unexpected vast distance between the people - it makes it interesting for me.
Flipping Chunnels
M: It sounds like you've played a huge range of venues. What have been the best and worst so far?
F: England's pretty rough, like North America. The venues I've always played are black boxes with the bar at the back. England is like that, except that their black boxes are 100 years older, so everything is more gummy and sticky and the couches backstage are that much more threadbare and the dressing room is in the beer cooler. I think 30 people showed up in Liverpool.
On the flipside, there were probably 2,800 people at the Olympia in Paris when I played there in February. Jimi Hendrix played there, Leonard Cohen did famous five-hour-long poetry readings/concerts there, plus every famous French person over the past few hundred years, like Edith Piaf. It's this gorgeous, humungous theatre and it has a marquee that's about two stories high. Gonzales shared the bill with me and we walked around the front after the show was over and everyone had gone home. We took a look at this enormous marquee that said "Feist and Gonzales" and it was this moment where we looked at each other and we were like, "Wow, that's us? Up there?" We've been coming to Paris for years and it's not far from where I live when I'm there, so I've passed it on my bike so many times. I don't think we ever expected to play the Olympia. Those moments come when I least expect them. It was kind of a pinnacle for both of us.
At the Spectrum on Thursday, June 30, 6 p.m., $26.50
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