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“I had to burn through a lot of shame and grief. And, at the same time, I had to identify where the wellspring of love actually is and try to stay tapped
into that.”
Cardigan and earrings by Coach; pants and shoes, stylist’s own.
LEFT: Vest and pants by Brunello Cucinelli; shoes, stylist’s own.
“It felt difficult to come up with lyrics that I believed were true, when I didn’t really know what was true anymore.” I’ve been talking with Leslie Feist about her experience of writing songs during the pandemic. Hearing an icon describe uncertainty feels unnerving, but perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. In preparing for our interview, I’ve realized that the Canadian singer-songwriter is something of a paradox. Highly vulnerable in her first-person lyrics while maintaining a relatively private personal life, Feist—who has used her surname as a mononym since the ’90s—is both an open and mysterious book. Speaking via Zoom from Los Angeles, where she and her three-year-old daughter live part-time when not based in Toronto, Feist is
by turns engaging, thoughtful, humble, and funny when describing her experimental writing process. Suddenly another paradox comes to mind: the genuinely low-key star.
Thinking about Feist in terms of paradoxes
or perceived contradictions may, however, be missing the point. Her new album, Multitudes, explores the harmonies and tensions—both sonic and existential—that can arise between different aspects of one’s identity. Having
ART
delved into the subjects of pain and its life- giving corollary, pleasure, on her appropriately titled 2017 record, Pleasure, Multitudes reflects a deliberate, almost spiritual, quest for cohesion. The album was workshopped through a series of intimate live residencies at various locations in Europe and North America during 2021- 2022. Long before the pandemic, Feist tells
me, she had been pining “to make a concert intended for only one to ten people at a time, and to do it on the hour, every hour, for long stretches” in experimental settings. Then, when the pandemic shifted the parameters of live performance, she found herself able to explore the idea of smaller concerts. Collaborating with designer Rob Sinclair, who previously worked on David Byrne’s American Utopia live shows, Feist developed an “in-the-round” format that allowed her to blur the boundaries between performer and audience.
The songs on Feist’s sixth solo record chronicle the complex personal and global circumstances of the past few years. Three months before the COVID-19 pandemic kicked off in March 2020, Feist adopted her daughter and became a single parent (“I’m not
in partnership” is her eloquent phrasing when the topic arises). Not long after, Feist’s father,
the New Brunswick-based abstract expressionist painter Harold Feist, passed away. “These experiences were such huge personal puzzles and I had to hold my own counsel,” Feist recalls. “I had to burn through a lot of shame and grief. And, at the same time, I had to identify where the wellspring of love actually is and try to stay tapped into that.” The subjects of friendship and love beyond conventional romantic relationships braid throughout Multitudes, and I ask Feist about the bonds that sustained her during quarantine. “I suppose in a primary romantic partnership, you get used to the flux of giving and receiving care, but it can be difficult to ask friends for what you need. But the pandemic made figuring out how to ask, and how to be in support of myself, so much more necessary.”
The last song on Multitudes is called “Song
for a Sad Friend” and its sparse acoustic instrumentation and understated lyrics embody the album’s themes of acceptance and resiliency. Feist’s shimmering soprano begins, “Don’t be sad my friends / That’s the last thing I’d say,”
a sentiment that swells to the crescendo, “Well
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