Feist - Let It Die

If you followed my advice last year and picked up a copy of Kings of Convenience's Riot On an Empty Street, you're already vaguely familiar with Canadian singer/songwriter Feist, as she provided backing vocals on two tracks. She's also added vocals for fellow Canucks Apostle of Hustle. Not bad company. This year, (Leslie) Feist celebrated the US release of her own full-length, Let It Die, to the delight of critics and thoughtful souls everywhere. The 11-track album, however, both hits and misses. Opening delicately with "Gatekeeper," an acoustic piece with light strumming and just a touch of keyboard keeping it soft, Let It Die then proceeds to its most upbeat and fun original track, "Mushaboom." I love the bouncy quality to this one. It makes you smile whether you want to or not. Such is not the case with the title track. "Let It Die" is an incredibly thoughtful and honest song lamenting "The saddest part of a broken heart / isn't the beginning so much as the start" and "Now I know what I don't want / I learned that with you." "One Evening," too gets my stamp of approval, but then I get bored. Track after track from that point on blend together, with nothing standing out really except for the slightly whiny quality Feist's vocals start to take on and the occasional mixing up of instruments - add a harp there, some horns here, whatever. It just becomes work to get through the rest of the record for me. "Leisure Suite," a play on words - I get it. It's just not clever. No amount of finger snapping is going to get me behind this bad cocktail attempt. It actually reminds me of that awful 70s song "Midnight At the Oasis." If you don't remember that song, just take my word for it; it's not pleasant. "Lonely Lonely" drones in a medieval chanting manner that just irritates me and vaguely reminds me of Paula Cole - another female singer/songwriter I could do without. However, after all that bitching, I still have to applaud the cover of "Inside and Out," if for no other reason than I loved the original - can anyone touch the Bee Gees? (Ok, don't answer that, but seriously...) She stays faithful but adds a little bit of a naughty ingenue quality while keeping it sweet. Despite my best efforts to get into Feist, and her presence on a few of the SU staffs' Top 10 of 2005 lists, I'm afraid I have to stick with my original thoughts when I heard her on KOC. She just doesn't do it for me. But hey, it's just one reviewer's opinion, right? [www.listentofeist.com]