Feist

The Reminder - cd review

Popping Feist in the playlist was recommended to me an embarrassingly long time ago. About a year after first hearing about her I accidentally watched the playfully choreographed music video to Feist's "My Moon, My Man," one of the singles off her new album The Reminder. I went out the next day and bought it.

The Reminder features tracks equally as flirtatious while offering a storyline of sentimental, folksy and gospel-inspired tunes. The overall effect is a continuous listen with emotional highs and lows but never a disappointment.

Feist introduces you to the experience with "So Sorry," one of the aforementioned sentimental tracks, only to feed right in to the raucously feel-good "I Feel It All." Later on, after a quiet meditation on "Park" and the following "Water," the listener is jarred awake with "Sea Lion Woman" which features a chorus of gospel singers in a sing-a-long style fury smack dab in the middle of the album.

This effect kind of reminds me of a high school boyfriend who was diagnosed with bipolar: all at once charming, silly and manic. In Feist's case, the dementia is only apparent in the stark contrast of song to song, but certainly not in inspiration or execution.

Originally published in Spare Change News 8/23/07.