Feist

Feist – The Remainder

With inclusion in the art-rock collective Broken Social Scene, and residing and touring with foul-mouth electro-vixen Peaches, you’d imagine Leslie Feist’s recording output to favor the outside boundaries of acceptability. Instead, she aims and hits the bull’s-eye center of elegant pop sentiment. With a rich tenor that can switch from charmingly playful to heart achingly emotive, it’s the slow burning jazz underpinned numbers, where feeling, not power, puts her voice on clear display. “The Water” saunters with brushed drums, soft piano and the deep thump of a slow walking bass line, all minimally arranged so the singing can capture all the attention. But before such mellowness can induce a yawn, out burst numbers like “1234” and “My Man My Moon”, alive with pomp and toe tapping bop. Feist fits somewhere on a line connecting the kooky pop embellishments of Bjork to the sultry jazz vocals of Norah Jones. Not a bad place to be at all.