:: Feist - Metals

Feist

Four years after the release of her Grammy-nominated, best selling album The Reminder, Feist returns in 2011 with Metals. It was recorded in Big Sur, California and co-produced by longtime collaborators Chilly Gonzales and Mocky, as well as newcomer Valgeir Sigurðsson. Like her previous record, this set of songs astoundingly intimate, yet often exuberant; rife with transcendent and unforgettable pop gems. Feist is able to harness all her gifts to create something essential: the gorgeousness of her voice, and the way she mixes complicated emotions with equally complicated arrangements while making it all seem so effortless. The singer and multi-instrumentalist taps into vast pockets of seemingly undiscovered space within the four-minute pop song, which she fills with an orchestra’s worth of musicians and instruments. Hollow tom-tom drums echo through “Bittersweet Melodies”, on “Undiscovered First” the songwriter transforms a waltz into a tambourine-and-pound-driven note about mountaineers, and the quest for beauty and discovery. The album’s closer, a soft, resolved plea called “Get It Wrong, Get It Right,” is almost perfect. Metals remains as wonderfully organic and distinct as her previous records. It is earthy and raw, replete with strings, horns and ivories that purposefully move from one pole to the other yet rarely tip into indulgence. Backing vocals throughout range from the raucous to the barely perceptible, underlining how much of a group effort this is. As made clear on last year’s documentary Look At What The Light Did Now, Feist’s core collective is very much a long-standing unit. On top of all this, she is singing better than ever, whether providing Comfort Me with its wicked central lyric, or cooing atop haunting album centrepiece Anti-Pioneer, you get the impression that this rough gem of a record is exactly what she intended from the outset.