Feist – ‘Multitudes’ review: a visceral and hopeful existential voyage

13 April, 2023

Feist

Leslie Feist wrote her sixth studio album ‘Multitudes’ following her daughter’s birth and her father’s sudden death. The two life-altering events taking place at such close proximity pushed the Canadian singer into a new era of songwriting, leading her to let go of anything “performative” and, as she shared in a statement, thrusting her truth “into an unavoidable light”.

Feist’s three-decades as an inventive performer and visceral vocalist includes stints in Calgary punk bands, time in indie-rock collective Broken Social Scene, multiple Grammy nominations and her massive single, ‘1234’, that will eternally be associated with an Apple iPod Nano advert. Last year, when allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, who Feist was supporting on tour in Ireland and the UK, she was caught in the crossfire; she made the decision to leave the tour after just one show, recently describing the sole performance as an “out of body” one.

With her follow-up to 2017’s ‘Pleasure’ and first new music in six years, her outward stretch turns inward, leaning into a new level of musicality and painstaking self-awareness. ‘Multitudes’ was written in part during an experimental and communal set of shows Feist put on through 2021 and 2022 by the same name, and 12 poetic tracks that make up ‘Multitudes’ embody the same inventiveness, intimacy and connection of that limited run of performances in the round.

The album starts with the sporadic and clamouring ‘In Lightning’ and Feist commanding her voice like an instrument, going from echoing tones to hushed whispers, all the while framing the story of existential awareness. Instead of the typical dread over existence, her self-examination lands on an optimistic acknowledgement of her innate agency: “And if I’m frightened it’s just because / Of the power vested in me”.

The theme of self-inquiry continues to bubble up throughout the record like in ‘Forever Before’ as she balances queries over synth and clashing percussion. “What’s gotta end for forever to begin?” she asks in shaking vibrato over gentle guitar strumming. That thread of introspection is also present in ‘Hiding Out In The Open’, as she sings “Everybody’s got their shit”, sweetly before resolving, “But who’s got the guts to sit with it?” The track takes the form of a singalong, with Feist’s hiding staggering revelations under her delicate voice, at one point offering her an antidote on the power of emotions with the words “Love is not a thing you try to do / It wants to be the thing compelling you”.

There’s something delightfully human about ‘Multitudes’ and in Feist’s perspective as someone experiencing the ephemeral nature of life transmuted through a hopeful filter. There’s sadness here, but there’s also joy and as the tracks play out you get the sense that one can’t exist without the other.

The last line of ‘Multitudes’ captures the album’s sentiment in a concise declaration. It comes at the end of the sparse acoustic track ‘Songs For Sad Friends’. In the song, Feist makes space between her words, speeding up and slowing down her lyrical delivery, capturing the fluctuating nature of emotions sonically before lush string orchestration takes over at the bridge. It’s one of the most visceral moments of the album, and she sings the final words like there are tears swimming in her eyes. “By the overwhelming times/Holding out but not holding in,” she reveals before adding “And it’s from here, we can really begin.”