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Feist : 27/02/05 - Glee Club Birmingham

I pretty much went to this gig with an open mind, along with Rich, not knowing quite what to expect, having listened to Feist for much of the end of 2004 I had a good idea of her style, but she added so much more than what is found in her recordings.

Coming from Canada she brings us music that allows the listener space to crawl inside the songs and make them their own. In a style of singing called Jhai (”a detached manner of singing especially suited to very emotional material. The emotion is underplayed, never quite let’s go and leaves room for the listener to crawl inside.”). Feist may have coined this for herself, she complety fills her debut album “Let it die” with blissfull strungout melodies that cannot fail to capture the listener, if she didn’t invent Jhai, she certainly creates it in her own style.

I found Fiest when she added a femine touch to the long awaited second album, “Riot On An Empty Street” from the Norwegien acoustic duo, Kings of Convenience, who also make people happy and bring smiles even when people are really sad.

I was expecting a stand up gig where she would sing tracks from the album and then disapear. for just £8 I shared the Fiest expereince, the set lasted a good one hour and forty minutes. She came out onto the stage with her band and was genuinely shocked to see so many people, in fact by the time it was time for the set, the fantasic main room of the Glee club was filled with people just sitting on the floor and chilling out.

Support was given by Marc Carroll, a lone figure on a clutured stage, reminded me of David Gray, heavy strumming and looped piano sequences, with an almost shouty quiet voice.

The Feisty set began with “The Build Up” which is one of the tracks on the Kings of Convenience album, that she added her seemingly effortless and strangely beautiful style to. It then becomes dificult to recall what songs came in which order, because the whole gig from then on was magical. I just know that there were songs that I hadn’t heard, lots of songs I hadn’t heard, including a track that she did while she was a part of “Broken Social Scene”. She would switch style of song as if it were second nature, a couple of soft hush tone tracks gave way to spectacular upbeat and at times slightly angsty tunes. Her band were amazing, also switching between instruments with ease. The version of “When I Was A Young Girl” oozed angst and sorrow and determination all mixed up together, with a couple of stamps of her high heels just to add that extra cutting edge, tottally infectious.

The songstress, dressed in flowy black clothing at times used a voice recorder that would record her voice and play it back at the same time. In an instant the room was filled with harmonies of the same voice, it was amazing and she was controlling it all. If that wasn’t nice wnough the crowd were invited to be backing vocalists on one of the tracks.

Fiest on stage is funny, charming and cute, both her and her band recieved loud rounds of appaluse. At one point she invited the crowd to a slow dance contest, with the prize being a bottle of liquid diamonds, which we would know as water. The set built up and up, she took time to tune to perfection and performed a few songs just with her voice and a few strums on the guitar that she was holding. Even with this guitar she managed to move fluidly on stage, she really got into her music and gave it her all. A completly different style of singing that puts her in the leauge with PJ Harvey and even Bjork at times.

Before we knew it we were standing up just to applaude the talent that we had just witnessed and was allowed the pleasure of floating through. The encore saw the singing of “Inside and Out” getting the hips going throughout the room certainly showed that Fiest can sing the rocky tracks as well as the chilled out tracks.

A very good gig, nice and easy for a Sunday evening in a venue that is simply nice and with a crowd that sat quietly and listened to what she was signing.

Feist website | Sample of “Mushaboom”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2005 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Music, Reviews - Gigs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.