The Feist Discography Rate: Same Trailer, Different Management.
- Thread starter Oleander
- Start date
she/her
Not got the time. Sorry hon.
F
Former member 21294
Metals and Pleasure are her best works and that is the tea.
Despite being a big fan of Monarch, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being the first album cut if only because of the lack of familiarity.
And just a little heads up, in case anyone was wondering where this gif I used in the Rate Queue thread came from, the answer will be revealed later today for the next installment of the Tastemakers Corner.
And just a little heads up, in case anyone was wondering where this gif I used in the Rate Queue thread came from, the answer will be revealed later today for the next installment of the Tastemakers Corner.
Cool! Let me know if you need any recommendations or info about the sonic palette of the albums.
Welcome to the third installment of The Tastemaker Corner!
As I said earlier, today’s post is about solving the “mystery” of this gif which I made myself and used in the Rate Queue thread:
Admittedly, this probably wasn’t all that hard of a mystery for you to solve based on the quality of the gif and the video it is from as well as Feist’s appearance which doesn’t match with any of her proper eras. If you thought that this gif depicted something related to Feist’s real debut album, Monarch (Lay Your Jewelled Head Down) then you’d be right! As you saw in the little biography I wrote for the intro post, Feist’s debut album went under the radar due to a combination of factors such as the very limited amount of copies that were made. (More on that later!) Despite this era in Feist’s solo career being her briefest, there is one other creation we received besides the album. That would be (although Wikipedia doesn’t list it as such) her debut single which also happens to be the opening track from Monarch, “It’s Cool To Love Your Family.” The reason we know that it was a single of some sort is that a music video was shot for it and that music video is where the gif comes from. The gif actually comes from the opening of the video, a video which despite being of its time and shot rather simply is still composed of various different parts. The overarching story of the video seems to be that Feist is some sort of stagehand in the theater who winds up taking over the stage once the play is over and performs for the small crowd. The play appears to be about the death of some sort of monarch is which most definitely a nod to the album's title.
Here are two interesting tidbits of information about the video. The first is that since it was released in 1999, that would make the Leslie Feist we see in the video the same age as me. Man…..what the hell am I doing with my life? The second interesting fact is that I discovered the video much later than I did the album, I actually found it while researching for this rate. The crazy thing about that is the person who uploaded the video is actually someone who mutually follows me on Instagram who I knew as a fellow Tori Amos fan and I never noticed until I looked the video up for this write-up earlier today. I feel like I should thank him but that's just an awkward situation waiting to happen so let me not ddddddd. Anyway, back to the video……..it has an almost home movie feel to it, thanks in part to the shots of Feist with the projector, and in my opinion, it suits the song incredibly well. If you’ve been paying attention to all the descriptions I have given about the Monarch album, you’ll realize that I have repeatedly said the album is full of youthful brightness and joy. None of the songs on the album are more representative of that than this one. It’s just such a bubbly and infectious little number that you can’t help but love. It’s really not far from the moments of sheer glee Feist would show on later albums, it’s maybe just a bit simpler sounding than songs like Mushaboom and I Feel It All even though it has some jangly guitar, strings, and more. It really feels like a proper beginning for Feist’s solo career despite the fact that it is not widely known by fans. Like her more well-known pop hits, as soon as you hear It's Cool To Love Your Family, it's hard to stop yourself from singing along.
So there’s your little intro to Feist’ debut album and single, I hope you enjoyed it. More info about both to come up later on so, for now, I’ll leave you to listen to the rest of the album on your own and see what other treasures there are for you to discover. I’ve included both the music video and an audio-only version below because the audio in the music video seems to skip a bit at times and is not as clear as the audio-only version.
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Remember how I said one of the things I'd spotlight in this feature would be songs that didn't make the cut? Well, it's time to take a look at not one but two songs Feist was involved with that didn't make it onto the final song list for the rate.
As I said before, thanks to the runaway success of 1234 and the very large amount of attention it gave to Feist, she got the opportunity to perform on various important platforms like Sesame Street, The Grammys, etc.... One TV special Feist took part in that you might not have known about (unless you're a big Colbert fan I suppose) was Stephen Colbert's A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! which aired on Comedy Central in November of 2008.
Unlike some of Colbert's other friends who appeared in the special, Feist did not end up playing herself. She played the role of a singing angel as seen here:
Here's a brief synopsis of the special's plot courtesy of Wikipedia:
"The plot is that Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, while heading to the film studio to shoot his Christmas special with Elvis Costello, becomes trapped in a cabin in "bear country" (upstate New York or Vermont) when he hears a bear prowling outside. A number of his friends stop by the cabin to sing Christmas songs with him as Stephen tries to find ways to escape the cabin and make his Christmas as special as possible, ending by revealing that the titular "greatest gift of all" is the DVD release of the special."
There don't appear to be any clips of Feist's segments on Youtube but I'm sure you can find the special online if you look for it. While I, unfortunately, don't have clips to share with you, what I do have are the two songs that Feist performed which appeared on the special soundtrack which went on to win the 2010 Best Comedy Album Grammy Award. The first song, called "Please Be Patient," is performed entirely by Feist and is written over the tune of the Christmas classic "Angels We Have Heard On High." The song is basically Heaven's version of a "please hold" message and holding music. Comedy aspect aside, Feist's voice sounds lovely and it' easy to see why she was cast as the angel.
The second song is a group cover of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" which features Stephen Colbert, Elvis Costello, Feist, Toby Keith, John Legend and Willie Nelson on vocals. Aside from some.......interesting vocals courtesy of someone (I'm not sure who) this is a pretty straightforward and loyal cover on which Feist, as usual, sounds great.
A couple of months prior to this Christmas special, Feist went on Colbert's show for an interview and to perform "I Feel It All." You can see the interview here and hear audio of the performance below.
She would later return to Colbert's show to perform "Century," the second single off of Pleasure with Colbert stepping in to take over the Jarvis Crocker spoken word segment featured on the song.
Returning to the two Christmas special songs, while I do enjoy these comedy tunes, I think it's pretty clear why I didn't include them in the rate. I hope you enjoy listening to them, though!
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All of the Tastemaker Corner posts have now been linked on the front page for easy access!
For the next installment (coming soon), we'll be digging even further into Feist's past in order to explore her days as a punk rocker and how despite the various sonic directions her solo music has taken over the years, she's never forgotten her punk roots.
My fellow PJ Harvey fans like @JamesJupiter, @enjoy, @LE0Night, et al are definitely going to want to keep an eye out for it. That's all I'll say about it for now.
For the next installment (coming soon), we'll be digging even further into Feist's past in order to explore her days as a punk rocker and how despite the various sonic directions her solo music has taken over the years, she's never forgotten her punk roots.
My fellow PJ Harvey fans like @JamesJupiter, @enjoy, @LE0Night, et al are definitely going to want to keep an eye out for it. That's all I'll say about it for now.
As I stated Feist's short biography, she got her start in music all the way back in 1991 when she founded the punk band Placebo. For those unfamiliar with Feist's early days, imagining Feist as a punk rocker might be a difficult thing to do but the reality is that the two fit like a glove. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information out there about her Placebo days but she was forced to go on vocal rest in 1995 after blowing her voice out. Talk about dedication! You'd never be able to tell from her solo work that she suffered vocal cord damage because of her voice sounding so pristine and beautiful. Now, while there isn't a lot of information about Placebo available, we do have access to (at least some of?) the music the band put out thanks to a Youtuber who decided to share it.
The first work we have appears to be an EP titled Tiny Gugler, which was released in 1994. That would make this release from the time prior to her vocal damage. Here's the cover art.
The EP consists of four songs: Bicycle Safety, Bobib, Spike, and One More. If you still think I'm kidding about Feist being a punk rocker, just take a listen to these four songs. They all go hard, mixing elements of punk with hard rock and some grunge thrown in for good measure. The reason I told @JamesJupiter, @enjoy, @LE0Night, (@soratami and @Trouble in Paradise might want to check this out, too) and others to keep an eye out for this post is that Feist sounds remarkably similar to PJ Harvey at different points on this EP. Actually, she sounds so much like PJ on a lot of the material she recorded with Placebo that it's kind of creepy. Now I love PJ with all my heart so don't take that as a dig at Feist, I just find PJ's voice to be so singular and unique that it's weird to come across someone who can mimic it so accurately.
With its roaring guitar intro and Feist unleashing a voice so uncharacteristically wild and pained, it Bicycle Safety sounds like something off of Rid of Me. Feist's voice is a tiny bit more restrained on Bobib but the instrumentation is more fleshed out as the unrelenting distorted guitar is joined by flourishes of hard-hitting drums. It feels like a fusion of Dry and Rid of Me. The EP's title track starts off simpler than the preceding songs with the eerie sound of distortion kicking off the track before the drums and guitar begin their quiet and understated takeover of the track. After Feist comes in, the volume is turned way up and she almost seems to battle with the instruments at times to see who can be louder. Then the instrumentation lets up a bit to let Feist take control and from there on the track oscillates between these two stages. It's an interesting use of the soft/quiet vs hard/loud dynamic PJ incorporated into her early music which she credits to borrowing from The Pixies, as many artists at the time did. One More closes off the EP by doing exactly what its title suggests and presenting another hard-hitting rock number. The soft/loud dynamic is used in its most stark incarnation on this track as it shifts moments of forceful shouting along to the instrumentation from Feist to Feist dropping out entirely to let the instrumentation cool down and breathe a bit to the wild Feist and the thunderous instrumentation making a bold and sudden return. Listening to these songs and how feral and unkempt Feist's voice is at times, it's not hard to see how she ended up blowing her voice out.
The next bit of music we have is another EP called Sailor Boy, which was released in 1996 aka after Feist's break. Here's the cover.
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The EP consists of two tracks, Sailor Boy and Poet on the Roof. When one listens to Sailor Boy, it's clear that the band refined their sound since their Tiny Gugler days it still goes just as hard. It's just less garage-like in terms of the audio quality. The instrumentation is still very propulsive but with less distortion and while Feist's voice still soars, her performance isn't as unhinged as it was before. Maybe that's due to her learning to take better care of her voice? The tempo goes down for Poet on the Roof....at least until we get close to the minute mark where the song kicks into high gear a bit. The rest of the song sees both the instrumentation and Feist's voice jump from quiet and loud but she seems to belt more than she does yell. The final minute is packed full of unrelenting guitar and vocals that feel as if they are launching commands at the listener. Leslie doesn't sound all that much like PJ on this EP and she even sounds a bit more like her "usual" self for some brief moments, at least to my ears.
The final release from Placebo we have access to is what I'll call an album (even though it technically falls under the EP category) called Don't Drink The Bathwater, which was released in 1996. This is the last Placebo work that we have access to and what also seems to be their last release in general as Feist would move from Calgary to Toronto that same year. That same year she was asked by Noah Mintz of hHead to play bass in his solo project Noah's Arkweld. She played the bass guitar in Noah's Arkweld for a year despite never having played bass before. In 1998, she became the rhythm guitarist for the band By Divine Right and toured with them throughout 1998, 1999, and 2000. She also played guitar for some live performances by Bodega, but was never an official member of the band. She also filled out the final year of the decade by beginning her friendship with Peaches and kicking off the first of their many collaborations but we'll touch on those in a future post.
Here's the cover of the album:
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The album houses the songs Anchor Arch, Back Down The Same Way, Pale Pink Tiger, Lazy Review Guy, Keen Nose, Double Run, and Untitled. When one plays Anchor Arch, it's clear to see how much more the band refined their sound even from Sailor Boy which was released in the same year. The guitar is as boisterous and pounding as it was before, but it feels like we hear more of a range in terms of its sound instead of just sudden shifts from loud to quiet. Feist's feel the most restrained here but then the second half kicks in and she's wailing her heart out once more. Now when it comes to Back Down The Same Way, this is one of the tracks where I think Feist sounds the most like PJ. Maybe it's just the fact that she says "tie yourself" which reminds me of Rid of Me, the song. The song also takes the wailing vocals from the second half of Anchor Arch and fills most of the track and emphasizes just how powerful Feist's voice is. Pale Pink Tiger changes things up by opening with the sound of turning pages and following it up with a more spoken-word deliver from Feist before it shifts into a riot anthem and then back to a spoken word recitation etc... It's almost like an interlude and a less insane cousin to PJ's song Taut. Lazy Review Guy takes the humor of its title and emphasizes it by opening with a news reporter/radio ad-esque clip before giving way to some subtle guitar and drums which slowly build to their familiar blaring and thrashing as Feist's voice slips in and joins in on the escalating rise in tempo and volume before settling on a comfortable middle stage. Feist's delivery reminds me of Gwen Stefani at times thanks to inflections and vocal quirks that Feist utilizes on the track.
Keen Nose opens with more of a focus on steady drum work with the guitars relegated to the background before Feist's voice kicks in and takes over. Her performance is initially a lot calmer than we have seen on the other tracks which suits the slightly eerie instrumentation very well. Then you might have come to expect at this point, everything kicks into high gear and Feist lets the beast out with some more belting and chanting. Double Run has more of a swinging sound to it mixed with some striking guitar shredding and subtle but welcome drum flourishes. It's a lot more instrumentally-centered than the tracks before it and yet despite that, it's one of the only songs we have a live performance of.
There's also this live rendition of Lazy Review Guy for those interested.
As well as this performance of Back Down The Same Road from the same event but it doesn't seem to work for me so I will just link it to the title for anyone who wants to see if it works for them.
The final track from the album, Untitled, is the most experimental of the lot. There is a heavy amount of distortion on Feist's vocals and it sounds like she was either far from the mic or recorded the song underwater. Meanwhile, the instrumentation sounds normal so maybe this stark contrast was completely intentional. Her voice eventually drops out of the song all together as the instrumentation gets more loud and unruly. I saw someone say that it features animal sounds which would make sense given the cover art but I don't hear it.
Phew....that ended up being a lot longer than I expected dddddd. Let me go ahead and save the rest of her punk-leaning behavior for the Peaches post. Anyway, the reason why I said in the teaser for this write-up that Feist has never lost her punk side is that she has always been someone who does what she wants and makes the kind of music she wants to make. While her solo material as a whole is not as boisterous as her Placebo days, it seems that with time Feist has let her rocker side out more and more as evidenced by Pleasure and to a certain extent Metals. One thing that ties her Placebo days to her solo material is the fact that when Pleasure (the song) came out, many people said it sounded like a PJ Harvey number which, as you can see above, was also true of her music back in the day. It's clear that Feist continued to refine her sound as she progressed through her career but that ~feisty~ spirit from her early days has never really gone away, it just took on a more chameleon-like and refined nature with time. Essentially, it became more distinctly "Feist" than it was before.
F
Former member 21294
I'm going to dive head first into her discgoraphy in two weeks.
That's good to hear!
As for everyone else, I will tag all the interested folks once there are three weeks left which means......
I feel like I am contractually obligated to tag @Mina since I used this gif so let me get that out of the way.
I'm glad we have an understanding.
Of course. I would never use an artist's work without giving them credit or violate the terms of a contract I have signed.
Not to my knowledge but at this point because it's been @Mina's avi for who knows how long, that image is Mina. The two can't be separated.
Very true. Should have maybe put that in the post dddd. The fact that she sounded like PJ Harvey is also interesting given that PJ released her first post-Automatic Dlamini album in 1992 then Rid of Me in 1993 etc...