(For Jesse Joe)
Concert Review: Feist, Toronto, May 13
Posted: May 14, 2008, 5:06 PM by NP Editor
Feist
Sony Centre
Toronto, Ontario
May 13, 2008
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...to-may-13.aspx
Ethereal Leslie Feist is blessed with one of pop music’s most distinct voices. Effortlessly, as on display last night in downtown Toronto’s austere Sony Hummingbird Centre, the 32-year old Grammy nominee leaped octaves and stretched high notes as she brought the polite, sold-out crowd to its feet.
In a show that had been rescheduled from February, when The Reminder hadn’t yet become an international juggernaut on the back of the 1,2,3,4 iPod commercial success, Feist was shrouded in shadow and noir mood lighting and delivered a set more pretty than exuberant, unlike last year’s two celebratory sold-out shows at Toronto’s Massey Hall.
Set against a backdrop featuring a woman drawing live finger paint art, Feist opened with an acapella Help is on the Way and then segued into an acoustic Mushaboom which set the tone for the evening: this was a performance more dazzling than rocking, even when Feist bent the neck of her red electric guitar.
Wearing a short white vintage dress with frilly sleeves and high top tennis shoes, Feist played the part of wispy ingenue before leading her natty five-piece band in the uptempo twin hits My Moon My Man and I Feel it All, songs she performed on Saturday Night Live.
Feist seemed happy to be playing Toronto, her adopted hometown, shouting out her brother and joking that she was only getting through this performance by pretending it was the Rivoli, a Queen Street West launching pad where the native of Nova Scotia could’ve been found in 1999.
But now she’s moved on and her next Toronto gig is at the 19,800-seat Air Canada Centre and perhaps it’s that feeling of adapting to newfound super-fame which gave last night’s show a restrained air. Not tentative, but fragile, which only made the delirious men and women scream “I love you!” ever louder throughout the 90-minute set.
After a cover version of F----d Up Kid by Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, she got the audience involved on the haunting Intuition, having the crowd chant the “Did I, Did I?” final refrain as she serenaded the crowd against a giant red screen.
The Great Lake Swimmers added a musicality and additional oomph to 1,2,3,4, but Feist brought a threatening-to-dance crowd back to their seats on I’m Sorry and the lush, atmospheric Brandy Alexander.
On a night when Feist joked that at least three people in the audience had broken her heart — and she played guitar, keyboard and even a bit of Happy Birthday on harmonica — she ended the show not with dance hits like Secret Heart or Inside and Out, but with Let it Die as a mirror ball turned the Hummingbird Centre into an auditorium of a high school prom.
If home is where the heart is, last night in Toronto, Feist’s torch songs insinuated that the opposite also is true.
– Ben Kaplan, National Post
Canadian singer Feist
