FEIST - "THE REMINDER"

Good to Great

I consider myself really lucky to have grown up in a family with very disparate, often conflicting musical tastes. Even though there was controversy at the record player when it came time to pick out music for a party with my mom typically going for the George Strait, Gene Autry, or James Taylor and my dad anything from Little Anthony and the Imperials to The Temptations to Sade, I was at least exposed to a wide palette of expressive music. Though my musical preferences have since expanded beyond my parents’ taste, there has always been a middle musical ground that everyone gets behind and Feist’s “The Reminder” fits into that zone of comfort from which I can easily recommend to anyone.

It is no surprise to me that you can find this album at your local Starbucks because of what I call its ‘safeness’. I was initially turned off by the idea that Starbucks would be selling Feist’s latest even after considering the adult contemporary tendencies of several tracks on “Let It Die”, but after the initial grumbling, it makes perfect sense to me. Starbucks is a comfort zone after all; a familiar oasis, consistent in every facet from the glowing green signs to the gauzy green tea: you always know what you’re going to get when you go into a Starbucks. The music on “The Reminder” fits right into the coffee shop ambiance, all hisses and gurgles, finger snaps and upright bass. It might be disconcerting for Indie music fans to see an artist as fiercely independent as Leslie Feist from behind a Frappucino at one of the world’s largest retail sites, but look at the other albums on the shelf next to "The Reminder", which Hear Music, who handles Starbucks’ music offerings (and was once a great little record store which I frequented whenever I had an excuse to) has put there: the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, James Brown, Al Green, Wilco, Johnny Cash -- all albums which I am happy to have in my collection.

“The Reminder” is the result of Feist’s forays into three distinct ‘safe’ genres: Smooth Jazz on songs like “So Sorry”, “My Moon My Man”, and “The Limit to Your Love”, Singer-Songwriter Confessional on “The Park”, “The Water”, and “Intuition”, and her strongest, Pop on “I Feel It All”, “Past In Present”, “1234”, and “Brandy Alexander”. Feist manages to mix all of these into a nice comforting Christmas-y Blend. Her voice, calling to mind Sade, Norah Jones, or Mariah Carey as much as more like-minded influences like Joni Mitchell, is undeniably the strongest thing on this record. It is at once breathy and near whisper, soulful and in control. It has a tendency to disintegrate at the moment you expect her to sustain and hints at teenage cigarette rasp or the precipice of laryngitis.

The arranging and production on “The Reminder” is hit or miss for me: at its best it plays off of Leslie Feist’s voice, and it slides back into adult contemporary jamming at its worst. With all of the success that Feist has had lately, it pains me to think that she couldn’t have recorded on an upright or baby grand piano rather than the m.o.r. electric keyboard that is peppered throughout. In spite of the mixed bag production by better-than-that Swede Gonzalez, Feist manages to endow each song with its own transcendent moment: The way she strains the “we” on “So Sorry” along with Jamie Lidell’s Marty Robbins copping backing vocals, the way she explodes the second chorus on “I Feel It All” , the guitar breakdown 3/4 through “Sealion”, the way she half yells the opening lines to “Past In Present”, the transition into the bridge of “The Limit To Your Love” , the way she coos “some more” in “1234”, the stop start snapping in “Brandy Alexander”, the unexpected horn and organ part on “Intuition” followed by a choral call and response, the harp on “Honey Honey”, and the duet on “How My Heart Behaves”.

I rarely find myself going back to a track as much as I have with “I Feel It All” and “1234” makes me want to smack my gum like I was in the 5th grade. But, underneath the slickly nostalgic exterior of these songs are lyrics about heartache and the capricious nature of love. Feist sings obtusely about having and not having, but longing for some stasis with her love. Yet, in contrast to the uncertainty of her lyrics, Feist’s voice projects a calming hopefulness that is as comfortable as finding a Starbucks late at night in some alien city.