The time has come for us to gather round once again for the penultimate segment of The Tastemaker Corner and it's honestly crazy how fast time has flown! Choosing what to write about for these posts is a tricky thing because an artist as accomplished as Feist, who years upon years in the business, has accomplished so many things and done so many projects that it's hard to not try and spotlight all of them. What I've tried to do on the whole with this segment is to cover aspects of Feist's career that won't be or might not be covered in the elimination reveals in addition to showing new sides to songs that you did have to rate. We've seen a lot of different aspects of Feist's career throughout these posts such as her early days as a punk-rocker, her mastery of live performances and even some obscure releases that even I wasn't aware of. Aside from the obvious fact that all these pieces of the puzzle that is Feist's career are connected by simply existing as her creations, the other thing that ties them all together is the fact that I have blabbered on and on about them in sometimes borderline essay-length posts ddd.
Being the student of literature that I am, I've been forced to break down all kinds of texts by close reading every sentence in order to parse out any and every possible meaning imbued within the author's words. I guess I can't help doing that with any form of media that I consume even outside of academic settings ddd. My knowledge of the compositional and technical side of music is......limited at best but I've done my best to try and give my own interpretations of the Feist songs we've explored through this segment. A fan can only provide so much information which is why sometimes it is best to let artists speak for themselves about the art they create and that's what this segment is all about. As I've mentioned before, Feist's interviews are a blast to read and watch because she not only has a very lively and warm personality but because she has a clear passion for what she does. With that comes a great deal of knowledge and while she can at times go off on tangents and use ~unique~ metaphors, you can't help but resonate with what she says. She equally as poetic when she speaks as she is when crafting the lyrics to her songs and she has certainly taught me a lot. Feist writes about her own experiences but she manages to capture and explore the human condition and all the various shared experiences that connect us on an emotional level.
If you need proof of her desire to explore human habit and feeling, just look at the
questionnaire she released along with
Pleasure for fans to fill out and discuss their lives and what the term "pleasure" means to them. Basically, Feist has a way with words that is all her own and her insights about her music and the world around her are very illuminating so I wanted to dedicate a post to her take on her own music and history. With that said, let's step away from my incessant babbling and turn to some interviews of Feist's that show how intriguing her mind is.
In this CNN interview from the
Metals era, Feist explains her whole process starting with her punk roots and moving from there to how her physical surroundings and the Earth inform her music. She touches upon the loud and soft dynamic that I touched upon while breaking down her releases as a part of the band Placebo. It's a very short interview clip but she even touches upon the effect a gargantuan era like The Reminder can have on the artist who created it.
For the next interview we turn to the release day of
Pleasure and the interview Feist did with Studio q. Fair warning, this is a rather long interview clocking in at eighteen minutes. One very interesting part of the interview is the discussion of Feist's experience post-
The Reminder and how different it was to the time following the end of the
Metals tour. She discusses her creative process at length and one of my favorite quotes is when she says that compared to building something which is tangible like a screen porch kii, songwriting can be like "pulling filaments from the air" with a butterfly net.
The above interview wasn't her only appearance in Studio q, as she also gave an interview during the release of the
Look At What The Light Did Now documentary which gave an inside look at
The Reminder and the elaborate tour that came with it. Feist has never shied away from discussing her collaborators but this interview gives a more in-depth (it's nearly forty minutes long ddd) how the collaborative process works. She even talks about how the film isn't so much about her but about those collaborators who shaped the era, the album, the tour, etc..
You remember this gif?
Well, it comes from an interview from
The Reminder era (which is also very long, sorry dddd) that was done with Signed Media which I find particularly intriguing. Considering that it happens on a Ferris wheel, the interview is a perfect time capsule of Feist at that point in her life. She's still as elaborate in her descriptions of her music and the world around her as she is now but there is this light to the way she speaks that pairs perfectly with the album. She touches upon her whole musical history (including
Monarch) and it's interesting seeing the similarities and differences between her trip down memory lane in the midst of her peak of popularity and the time after the dust all settled.
Finding interviews from the
Let It Die era was tricky despite being the time she first came onto a lot of people's radar's but I did find this EPK for the album that includes interview clips of Feist discussing the album. The ~visuals~ are very early 00's home video with the effects used but it suits the quilted patchwork of different genres that is
Let It Die. My favorite bit might just be when she says that describing the record is like "looking through a sandstorm." What a typical Feistean metaphor. There's a rawness to the clip which exposes the heart of the album through the song clips and interview sound bites that matches the homespun nature of the process of making the album that lies behind the exterior sheen and polish of the songs themselves. The album is a balance of both these extremes and this behind the scenes look at it really drives home that point.
As there are no
Monarch era interviews to observe, I'll close this post off with this written interview from the
Metals era with SPIN called
"In Bed With Feist." While this interview touches upon her absence following the end of
The Reminder era, it's a lot more personal and intimate talk than a usual interview with a musician. You really feel for her when you read about just how drained Feist was following her commercial peak. She mentions that at one point she thought ''
Maybe I’ll never tour again. But maybe I’ll try to play guitar because I used to like doing it.'' Thankfully, as we all know, she was able to find her passion for music again and continue producing brilliant works of art.
Well, that's it for this post. What will the final Tastemaker segment be about?
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