Latest Release
- APR 14, 2023
- 12 Songs
- The Reminder (Deluxe Version) · 2007
- Let It Die · 2004
- Let It Die · 2004
- The Reminder (Deluxe Version) · 2007
- The Reminder (Deluxe Version) · 2007
- The Muppets (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) · 2011
- Let It Die · 2004
- Dark Was the Night · 2009
- Let It Die · 2004
- Metals · 2011
Essential Albums
- Before Leslie Feist released The Reminder in 2007, her career had been a series of little breakthroughs, often as a participant in other people’s successes. She had toured with her roommate Peaches, taken a star turn on Broken Social Scene’s landmark album You Forgot It In People, and dazzled listeners with her harmonies alongside Norway’s Kings of Convenience. Even her compelling 2004 album Let It Die—which consisted of equal parts originals and covers—felt like a whispered secret, a Canadian treasure coveted by cognoscenti across international borders. But The Reminder solidified Feist’s budding reputation not just as an incisive songwriter, but as one of her generation’s most subtly expressive singers, able to say so much with a mere fray or quiver in her voice. While touring behind Let It Die, Feist took advantage of empty sound-check rooms to write onstage, imagining how her next album might sound as she captured ideas with a Dictaphone. In March 2006, she decamped to Paris’ beautiful La Frette studios, recording on its porch and in its grand hallways and cramped libraries with a magpie band of enormous range. To wit, the first three tracks on The Reminder find Feist swaying through feather-light bossa nova for “So Sorry,” snarling with a grunge élan for “I Feel It All,” and finding a sweet spot of kaleidoscopic nuevo soul for “My Moon My Man.” And while her smash single “1234” famously reaches heights of ecstatic harmony, “The Park” is so spare and intimate that hearing it feels like an invasion of privacy. In the end, it’s that candor that makes The Reminder so compelling, as though Feist had written private messages to herself about self-care and self-respect—and had found them useful for others. There’s the canny way that the tensile track “The Limit to Your Love” recognizes that maybe someone else is the problem, for example. And “Honey Honey” is about not waiting for some lover to stroll back in and solve everything. “I know, I know, I know/That only I can save me,” Feist sings at one point on The Reminder, in a brilliant bit of bravado. And on this album she finally made herself, too.
- Indie Canada knew Leslie Feist as a gadabout guitarist with a golden voice well before her Broken Social Scene tenure. Still, even Feist heads were stunned at her poised transformation into a bossa nova-breathy chanteuse Parisienne, capable of effortlessly claiming evergreens by the Bee Gees (“Inside and Out”), Ron Sexsmith (“Secret Heart”), and Francoise Hardy ("L'amour ne dure pas toujours") as her own. Subtly crafted and pleasingly sweater-soft, this slow-burning sleeper refuses to do what its title demands.
Albums
- 2023
- 2004
- 2023
- 2023
- 2023
- 2017
Artist Playlists
- From breezy pop to heavy metal covers, this Canadian songstress can do it all.
- Many precocious talents have mined her distinct sound.
- Fierce women of folk, pop, jazz, and indie form a singular brew.
Singles & EPs
Compilations
- 2006
Appears On
- Kings of Convenience
More To Hear
- The artist premieres her holiday track "come out and play."
- Sofi Tukker picks the 5 Best Songs on Apple Music.
More To See
About Feist
Leslie Feist’s ethereal indie pop is irresistible, even when her soothing alto plunges deep into eerie, impenetrable worlds. It’s why she can deliver a perfect, prismatic pop hit like “1234” and cover Peaches’ electroclash cut “Lovertits” with equal sophistication, and why artists like James Blake and Mastodon are so eager to cover her work. Known as Feist, the Canadian singer/songwriter (born in Nova Scotia in 1976) has been anything but predictable. At 15, she founded the Calgary punk band Placebo (not to be confused with the British rock group), a move that subsequently tore up her vocal cords. She soon headed to Toronto, where she met the aforementioned Peaches, with whom she lived, toured, and collaborated with on 2000’s The Teaches of Peaches. In the following years, Feist joined indie-rock collective Broken Social Scene and began working closely with pianist/producer Chilly Gonzales, who helped her lay down the groundwork for her 2004 major-label debut Let It Die. The indie wanderer was now a bona fide chanteuse, elegantly crafting silky lounge-pop reveries like “Mushaboom.” By 2007’s The Reminder, she had reached pop’s pinnacle, earning a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album and hit singles with buoyant earworms “1234” (boosted by a memorable iPod ad) and “My Moon My Man.” Going forward, Feist has retained that pop accessibility while filtering it through increasingly abstract arrangements, often with Gonzalez and producer/multi-instrumentalist Mocky by her side. On 2011’s Metals, she stirred up the spirit of Big Sur with bluesy baroque-pop melodies both sparse and sweeping, while 2017’s more stripped-down Pleasure covers doom and death with groove and grace. “I only have one motivation,” she told Apple Music. “Whatever step I take, whatever floor I sweep, I want to do it fully.”
- HOMETOWN
- Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada
- BORN
- February 13, 1976
- GENRE
- Alternative