Check off another spot, a high one, on your Best Albums of 2007 list for Feist’s new solo disc. Listening to The Reminder is like getting a semester’s worth of classes in the art of music making in about an hour. Everything she does is so very right here—from the writing to the sequencing, every note and song has found the perfect place to shine. When (Leslie) Feist broke through with her 2004 album Let it Die, it came as somewhat of a surprise. She had been around with Broken Social Scene and a myriad of other bands, always one of a collective, so no one expected such an assured solo work.
Those who raised their eyebrows and nodded with cautionary approval in 2004 will find themselves up and cheering as Canada’s favorite daughter scores big. Again. The Reminder is a tour through the best parts of the singer-songwriter genre. Feist spent time recording in France, and her melodies shimmer with the sweet stylings of Euro jazz. “I Feel It All” manages to be wonderfully modern while reaching back, ever so quietly, to the solid songcraft of the 1960s when Burt Bacharach was ruling the charts with hit after hit. The tune is so seductively breezy that it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself going, “Was that Feist?” as a hot new car commercial flashes across your television screen.
“Limit to Your Love” is a slow-burning torch song and the most obvious successor to her previous hit “Mushaboom.” Feist may have started out as a growly girl in a punk band, but here, she’s all woman-alone-in-the-spotlight and it’s breathtaking. Even when she ventures out of her comfort zone for the traditional, island-tinged tune “Sea Lion Woman” or the highbrow Joni Mitchell-esque “Intuition,” she never makes a wrong move. Each and every artistic choice Feist makes feels completely genuine, and she flows from one genre to the next with perfect ease and control.
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