Feist - The Reminder

Many bands regard love and heartbreak as the ultimate components of vulnerability and consequently artistic expression. Try taking a good look in the mirror though. Not so easy, is it? Self examination leaves us feeling more than a little naked. With a few years under her belt since last album ‘Let It Die’, Leslie Feist has made the most of her time, digging deep for inspiration and creating a detailed portrait of self-reflection on her newest release, appropriately titled ‘The Reminder’.

Haunting in her sincerity, Feist creates intimacy through simplicity, relying on her ethereal voice, lo-fi production and gentle, dream-like instrumentation as her only mediums for cathartic abandon. The result is a bubbly Cat Power, a gentle fusion of guitar, piano and occasional horns that resonate gently in the background as Feist’s saccharine, earthly vocals precisely reflect the very intrinsic nature of the emotions they carry. Like its springtime sound, ‘The Reminder’ is pleasantly warm, luminous with the fortune of self-discovery rather than laden with regret. This is breezy indie-pop with some definite credibility.

With the nearly transparent layering of melodica and guitar, ‘I Feel It All’ is so light it floats, the lyrics lazily unwinding to personify the album. ‘Oh I’ll be the one who’ll break my heart/I’ll be the one to hope’. Despite ‘The Reminder’’s simplistic underpinnings, the album adeptly utilises a breadth of instruments while retaining Feist’s hypnotising vocals as the paramount sound. The lively single ‘1234’ showcases a brilliant display of horns blended with the easy billowing melodies of a ukelele to create near pop perfection in one of the album’s catchiest songs. Only towards the middle of the meaty fifteen song album do the tracks display even a glimmer of weakness, occasionally becoming a bit stagnant on the longer, slower numbers such as ‘The Water’ which clocks in at nearly five minutes. However, considering how musically rudimentary the album is, the infrequency with which the album becomes quiescent is an achievement in itself.

Profoundly introspective and breathtakingly sincere, these songs are stripped of flashy commercial crutches to successfully stand out on basics alone. Ultimately, this album is indie done right and a solid reminder of why we listen to Feist.