Feist Club
Katie and I went to see Feist last night at the Marquee. It was a great concert for sure!
here is what the chronicle herald had to say about the Saturday night show.
Feist mesmerizing
Amherst-born singer wows full house at Marquee Club
The words "intimate concert" and "Marquee Club" don’t go so well together these days; when the room is filled to the brim it’s hard to maintain much of a dynamic beyond "loud" and "louder."
But slender chanteuse Leslie Feist mesmerized enough of the audience at the Marquee on Saturday night during her midnight set to let her sensuous cobweb of a voice hang in the air while a trio provided a striking set of arrangements for the songs off her album Let It Die.
"Halifax! We’re finally here!" the Amherst-born singer proudly exclaimed at the start of her sold-out show, her first in the city (after having to postpone a Halifax Pop Explosion appearance a couple of years back). It was followed by a standing-room-only all-ages performance at the same venue on Sunday evening.
In a simple white dress, with a loose black tie, Feist took the stage solo, performing an a cappella version of the old hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, augmenting her performance with digital delay that layered her voice and created a one-woman choir. The song is known to movie buffs — of whom the singer is one — for its eerie use in the ’50s thriller The Night of the Hunter whose star Shelley Winters passed away the day before the concert. It’s pure speculation to suggest it was meant as a tribute, but it certainly set the stage for a show meant to be greeted with a certain reverence.
Appropriately, she moved on to The Build Up, a song she recorded with Norway’s Kings of Convenience, a dreamy tale of romantic indecision, before stretching out sonically with the ancient folk ballad When I Was a Young Girl.
She moved into more familiar territory with Let It Die’s lead-in track Gatekeeper, accompanied by flugelhorn and xylophone, a tale of a simple life and a simple job with scatting vocals that elicited cheers from the audience.
A new song inspired by the first lighthouse at Peggys Cove followed: "It was in 1622 . . . actually, I’m just making that up," she laughed. "Someone pick a date for me . . . how about 1842?"
The tune bore a hypnotic melody, although its lyrics in this solo rendition remained sadly unclear over the general club hubbub, but the red lights on stage seemed to mimic a shoreline beacon.
The band returned for a playful Secret Heart by Ron Sexsmith, with Feist leaning over the edge of the stage and holding her large hollow-body guitar over the heads of the crowd, before an upbeat cover of a song by New Buffalo, her Arts & Crafts labelmate from Australia.
"This next song marks a momentous occasion," she told the crowd, "of how an innocent drive on the Eastern Shore, looking at land I could never afford to buy became an inspiration." With that she launched into a joyous Mushaboom, with warm flugelhorn lines and loping melody proclaiming the romantic joys of rural life. The song remains a wonder, and a prime example of a magical combination of the right tune with the right voice.
Feist ended her set proper with a wild rendition of Nina Simone’s See-Line Woman, a portrait of a high-priced call girl turned into a frenzied electro-folk-gospel hybrid with some of the most soulful crooning of the evening.
For the encore, she pulled couples out of the crowd to waltz onstage to Let It Die’s title track, although hopefully its lyrics —"The tragedy starts from the very first spark / Losing your mind for the sake of your heart" — don’t have to ring true in their case.
She finally said goodbye with her popular cover of The Bee Gees’ Inside & Out, given a much more downbeat solo rendition than the CD’s pop froth take. For many it was a rather low-key finish, but it wound down the spell of the previous hour and a half to send us spinning out into the wee hours.
Also of note were the opening sets by Halifax’s Jenn Grant, who also has a way of combining rolling melodies with an aching scrim of a voice, and Sackville, N.B.’s Shotgun & Jaybird, playing churning and chiming songs with a surprise cameo by alternative Juno winner Julie Doiron on bass.
Definitely worth a look-see the next time they cross over the Tantramar Marshes.
http://www.sugarcainentertainment.com/music/images/feist.jpg
here is what the chronicle herald had to say about the Saturday night show.
Feist mesmerizing
Amherst-born singer wows full house at Marquee Club
The words "intimate concert" and "Marquee Club" don’t go so well together these days; when the room is filled to the brim it’s hard to maintain much of a dynamic beyond "loud" and "louder."
But slender chanteuse Leslie Feist mesmerized enough of the audience at the Marquee on Saturday night during her midnight set to let her sensuous cobweb of a voice hang in the air while a trio provided a striking set of arrangements for the songs off her album Let It Die.
"Halifax! We’re finally here!" the Amherst-born singer proudly exclaimed at the start of her sold-out show, her first in the city (after having to postpone a Halifax Pop Explosion appearance a couple of years back). It was followed by a standing-room-only all-ages performance at the same venue on Sunday evening.
In a simple white dress, with a loose black tie, Feist took the stage solo, performing an a cappella version of the old hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, augmenting her performance with digital delay that layered her voice and created a one-woman choir. The song is known to movie buffs — of whom the singer is one — for its eerie use in the ’50s thriller The Night of the Hunter whose star Shelley Winters passed away the day before the concert. It’s pure speculation to suggest it was meant as a tribute, but it certainly set the stage for a show meant to be greeted with a certain reverence.
Appropriately, she moved on to The Build Up, a song she recorded with Norway’s Kings of Convenience, a dreamy tale of romantic indecision, before stretching out sonically with the ancient folk ballad When I Was a Young Girl.
She moved into more familiar territory with Let It Die’s lead-in track Gatekeeper, accompanied by flugelhorn and xylophone, a tale of a simple life and a simple job with scatting vocals that elicited cheers from the audience.
A new song inspired by the first lighthouse at Peggys Cove followed: "It was in 1622 . . . actually, I’m just making that up," she laughed. "Someone pick a date for me . . . how about 1842?"
The tune bore a hypnotic melody, although its lyrics in this solo rendition remained sadly unclear over the general club hubbub, but the red lights on stage seemed to mimic a shoreline beacon.
The band returned for a playful Secret Heart by Ron Sexsmith, with Feist leaning over the edge of the stage and holding her large hollow-body guitar over the heads of the crowd, before an upbeat cover of a song by New Buffalo, her Arts & Crafts labelmate from Australia.
"This next song marks a momentous occasion," she told the crowd, "of how an innocent drive on the Eastern Shore, looking at land I could never afford to buy became an inspiration." With that she launched into a joyous Mushaboom, with warm flugelhorn lines and loping melody proclaiming the romantic joys of rural life. The song remains a wonder, and a prime example of a magical combination of the right tune with the right voice.
Feist ended her set proper with a wild rendition of Nina Simone’s See-Line Woman, a portrait of a high-priced call girl turned into a frenzied electro-folk-gospel hybrid with some of the most soulful crooning of the evening.
For the encore, she pulled couples out of the crowd to waltz onstage to Let It Die’s title track, although hopefully its lyrics —"The tragedy starts from the very first spark / Losing your mind for the sake of your heart" — don’t have to ring true in their case.
She finally said goodbye with her popular cover of The Bee Gees’ Inside & Out, given a much more downbeat solo rendition than the CD’s pop froth take. For many it was a rather low-key finish, but it wound down the spell of the previous hour and a half to send us spinning out into the wee hours.
Also of note were the opening sets by Halifax’s Jenn Grant, who also has a way of combining rolling melodies with an aching scrim of a voice, and Sackville, N.B.’s Shotgun & Jaybird, playing churning and chiming songs with a surprise cameo by alternative Juno winner Julie Doiron on bass.
Definitely worth a look-see the next time they cross over the Tantramar Marshes.
http://www.sugarcainentertainment.com/music/images/feist.jpg
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