Leslie Feist has made a career out of being underestimated. The Canadian indie-folk stalwart netted a ubiquitous, broad-based hit in 2007 with 1234, a song featured in an iPod ad; to many, she is known simply as the “1234 singer”, and is frozen in time at that point in her career when she was making singalong folk-pop with striking dance videos. Those who stuck around for her subsequent albums – 2011’s arid Metals, the minimalist, bluesy 2017 album Pleasure, and this year’s fragmented, lightly electronic Multitudes – have witnessed first-hand her transformation into one of indie music’s most perceptive, penetrating songwriters. Her freeform songs of love and loss, delivered with a 200-grit sandpaper voice, feel like family heirlooms; objects whose stories become richer and more distinct every time you pick them up.
Feist’s tour in support of Multitudes plays on her tendency to be underestimated brilliantly. I’ve never seen a show quite like it, one which is so precisely choreographed and staged while still feeling so wildly, vividly real. It is a feat of sleight-of-hand that is spooky and psychedelic, utilising fairly commonplace performance tools – crowd work, a live video feed, minimalist staging, good old-fashioned charisma – to execute a masterful rug-pull from beneath the audience’s feet. It feels ridiculous to say in regards to a live show, but I’m a little afraid of spoiling the surprises the Multitudes tour has up its sleeve. The best guidance I can give is simply that you should see one of the tour’s few remaining dates for yourself, and find yourself caught off-guard by one of the most masterly rock shows I’ve seen in a long time.
