It’s hard to imagine Feist as the screaming lead singer of a punk band called Placebo, particularly after seeing her concert demeanor. Her voice is fairly soft. But she offsets any illusion of timidity with an occasional gut-powered growl that sounds, well, kind of painful.
That’s the beauty of Feist. She’s been around the block a few times, with different styles, instruments and collaborators. By now, she’s holding her own. Her album Let it Die was released in 2005 and has earned her Juno awards for new artist of the year and alternative album of the year. Even though it was her second album, Feist made it clear at this show that she’d rather not be marked by her first release, Monarch, from 1999 (“We can forget about that,” she joked in a half-singing, high-pitched squeak).
The success of Let it Die aside, Feist has quite a musical resumé, most of which falls in the “indie” category. After Placebo, her voice was shot from all the screaming, so she learned guitar, becoming a guitarist for By Divine Right. As a vocalist or guitarist, she has worked with Kings of Convenience, Renaud Letang of Manu Chao, The New Deal and Chilly Gonzales. She was a founding member of Broken Social Scene and even made a sock puppet rap in Spanish as “Bitch Lap-lap” for her friend Peaches’ “Teaches of Peaches” tour.
Feist’s most recent album, Open Season, is an album made up mostly of remixes and alternate versions of the songs from Let it Die. Her show at the Fillmore was the one-year anniversary of her current band’s formation.
The simplest way to describe Feist live is “refreshing.” She didn’t just go through the motions for each song to appease those in the audience who like to sing along to radio versions. Some songs were slower, some were faster, some started slow with blues-style rambling over one chord, but every song brought out a new character; a new persona for Feist to play with. And as she released herself into these roles, even that of the raucous guitar-god was not overtly masculine. They all exuded pure, unabashed femininity.
After two underwhelming but satisfactory opening acts (ok, I’ll name them: Rubies and The Long Winters) and a half an hour wait for the stage crew to set up and tune guitars, the lights went down and Feist nonchalantly traipsed on stage. She picked up her big red Gibson guitar (which, compared to her small frame, made her look almost like a munchkin) and began with a slow version of “When I was a young girl.”
As soon as the second song, a surprising addition to the set added variety and freshness. Feist began alone with “The Build-Up,” a song she co-wrote with the boys from Kings of Convenience. On the album Riot on an Empty Street, the song is a duet with Erlend Øye and a starkly beautiful end to the collection. Live, the song was stunning with three-part harmonies and drums entering as the second verse began. (blog-aside: This happened to be the first song I had ever heard by Feist.)
Feist’s love of melody was clear and embraced by the crowd. She caressed it, changing a few notes, holding some and chopping others short. This improvisational technique was something that made her stand out from many other singers. Her voice was an instrument, not just a tool that went through a mixer and came out in tune and acceptable on the album.
Feist then asked the audience’s permission to sing some new songs, not that “no” was an acceptable answer. “It’s a matter of life or death,” she said, “Our lives and nobody’s death.” Seven or eight new songs populated the set and added a mystery imperative for an artist who is essentially promoting one album.
Her punk roots were clearest when it came to her guitar playing. It’s nice to hear a woman who can roar. She was rough with it, beating it up like a proper rocker while contorting her lips, flipping her hair and getting on her knees for a guitar solo. She was comfortable with just herself and her guitar, whether it was kicking the electric’s ass or fondling the acoustic.
The remainder of the show progressed something like an offbeat dream: a guest audience member singing “secret heart” and hamming it up, a tap dancer on the side stage, a girl passed out in the front row, an obnoxious British girl screaming “I love you,” a chorus of a seemingly drunken backup band, and Feist completely forgetting the words to “One Evening.” When she requested raised lighters during a slower version of the Bee Gees’ “Inside and Out,” there was a pathetic turnout–thankfully not to the ruin of the song.
Of course, “Mushaboom” received a raucous yowl from the crowd, but the live version was refreshingly different—-slightly longer and requiring all the energy of the entire band: trumpet, saxophone, percussion and all. An encore of “Gatekeeper” and a new song followed. The show ended with a breathtaking “Let it Die,” during which Feist clearly did not slack, regardless of how tired she must have been from the nearly two-hour set.
Like others before her, Feist took control of the daunting Fillmore stage–as both seasoned rebel and ravishing debutante. Her picture well deserves a spot on that hallway wall.
-Photos courtesy of Rachel Nash (Thank you!)
