A little while back, in a vinyl diary not so long ago, I mentioned the physicality of music – music for the feet, the mind and the heart.
Well I’ve realised I overlooked something when I left out the shoulders; it seems there’s an artist for everything.
The music for the shoulders that’s been growing on me lately is one Leslie Feist.
The Calgary chanteuse has been around a while, but I only stumbled on her a few years back through her dalliance with the Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It in People, where she does a rather splendid job of cutting through the hazy shambles that is ’Almost Crimes’, an album highlight and jump-around-like-a-lunatic delight only topped by the banjo-plucked Emily Haines-driven ‘Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl’, which to this day never fails to steal the breath and cut to the quick.
It would be easy to file Feist away as a composite of ballpark fellow-travellers – ‘marked by specks of Dusty Springfield's soul, Björk's confrontational adventurousness, and Joni Mitchell's warmth’ as Pitchfork would have it, with a dash of the piano bar jauntiness of Catpower or an edge-roughened Regina Spektor.
But there’s more going on here than that… there's the shoulder thing for one.
Don’t take my word for it though, pop over here and try to sit still.
I kinda like the video too… even if there are certain shades of OK Go about it.
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I like Feist. I first came upon her when she was touring with Gonzales a few years ago - singing backing vocals and performing to a large extent equally with Jason Beck/Chilly Gonzo. She's a fantastic performer and gets the cheesy-but-cool Gonzo thing perfectly.
That video's great. I find often that the production on Feist's stuff lacks a bit of edge or sparkle, but she writes some great songs, and this one be fun.
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