2023-09-01 09:08:38
Rock shows follow unwritten rules: often acts will switch from the big stage to a small stage for a few acoustic songs towards the end of the set. Feist is going the other way on her current tour. At the guest performance on Thursday in Vienna, the first since 2012, she first played solo in the middle of the hall, then with the band on the main stage. “It’s a bit like an installation,” she said in an APA interview.
With this statement, the 47-year-old referred to the alleged fan who filmed with his cell phone during the concert – and whose impressions were projected onto a screen. Much more exciting: Feist brought new and old songs alone with her guitar for almost an hour, surrounded by the audience and only slightly increased, before she dressed the remaining songs in more lavish arrangements with her fellow musicians. The artist also recited poems.
“It was about taking away elements that make up a rock show,” Feist explained the concept. Otherwise, “a person is in the light above and sends down to the audience,” she said. “I never really felt like I belonged there. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play a normal show again. Well, we did festivals over the summer so we had to do that. But I realized the other one Approach is more exciting for me.”
The new studio work “Multitudes” is different, at least from the predecessor “Pleasure” (from 2017). Feist: “On the album before that, I went as far in the direction of lo-fi as possible – so far until my toes stuck over an abyss and I felt like I couldn’t go any further.” At the time she thought that nothing in life was perfect and clinical, why should that be the music? “It was like a reflection of what it means to be human. There’s also a lot of confusion there. I felt good about that at the time.”
When she heard the album again two years later, she rebelled “like a teenager”: “It’s not me!” Feist laughed during the conversation in the gasometer. “I realized how far I had pushed to the edge. For the next two years I thought about what the production of the next album could be like. I realized that I was turning around 180 degrees and going in the exact opposite direction had to.”
Feist composed during the pandemic. “I had a digital recorder and was able to experiment with it,” she said. “I learned to manipulate it, singing into the mic from close and far away. It then felt like two characters talking about the same story.” While she used to record everything almost live and then add a few overdubs, the Canadian dared a different process for “Multitudes”.
“I first played the songs solo, then four gifted musicians came along. They were free to interpret the songs and contribute their parts,” explained Feist. “We just let the musicians play whatever they wanted, then it was like carving: stripping away from the instrumentation until the song was what I had in mind. There’s an intimacy at the core of the album, but the songs are massively produced and arranged.”
Feist also went a new way with the voice: “I’ve always sung through an amplifier or effects devices. That always broke the original signal before it reached the listener’s ear. This time I thought about what it would be like if I’m doing the exact opposite.”
“Multitudes” is quite a challenge that is worth taking on. The same applied to yesterday’s more than two-hour performance. It’s really a pity that only 1,500 visitors got involved.
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