Nearly two years after its release, Leslie Feist's second solo album-- Let It Die, a sultry melange of jazz, disco, downtempo, and French pop-- is enjoying the audience it always deserved. Regardless of what poor reasons initially kept listeners at arm's length (knee-jerking because the record is roughly half-full of covers, distrust of a 2004 release from this compatriot of the then-unfashionable Peaches, a spotty solo debut), the protracted embrace is welcome, and a reminder that heady, grownup pop can attract listeners without the gentle nudges of AAA radio and Starbucks.
Armed with a trio of first-tier singles-- the spritely and still underrated "Mushaboom", the desolate title track, and a pulsing cover of the Bees Gees' disco ballad "Inside & Out"-- Feist has quietly become the most popular satellite in the Broken Social Scene system, one of the few members of that collective to command not only respect but admiration.
With Feist touring and introducing Let It Die to new audiences even into the first few months of 2006, it's natural that early adopters are restless for a new release, a role filled this week by Open Season, a generous 15-track collection of remixes, reworkings, and collaborations released in Canada via Arts & Crafts. Unsurprisingly, the album is overrun with deconstructions of Feist's signature song-- there are four versions of "Mushaboom"-- but it also features a cover of Peaches' "Lovertits", a track with Readymade FC, and a duet with Jane Birkin rescued from the latter's 2004 comeback LP Rendez-Vous.
Let It Die's sparse rhythms, roomy arrangements, and seamless genre-blending make it ripe for re-tooling, so it's disappointing that so many of the reworked tracks mimic the sound and mood of their source material rather than stretch them. Feist already straddles the line of coffeetable MOR and cocktail jazz, and many of these remixes move to the wrong side of that divide: Embracing trip-hop's post-halcyon days, the aimless atmospherics of some of the tracks hint at neither post-millennial dread nor the slinky, cinematic grandeur of the genre's most effective material.
Most egregious is that "Inside & Out", Feist's lugubrious disco tune, is denied the swirling, maximalist treatment it deserves. Its lone appearance here comes with Apostle of Hustle's "unmix", a stripped-down live version featuring only Jason Collett's scratchy, detuned guitar and Feist's vocals, a combination that seems mismatched. The track stutters along without providing a fluid melody for Feist to ride; fortunately she doesn't compound the problem with a melismatic or overwrought delivery, but the awkward pull between her voice and Collett's guitar never creates an interesting tension. Whether the compilation's creators were disallowed to use Ewan Pearson's two remixes of the track-- one a club burner, the other a waterlogged dub-- or left them off because it was feared they wouldn't mesh with the rest of the material, their omissions are unfortunate.
A few official remixes do make appearances here-- including both Mocky and VV (the French electronic duo and frequent Feist compatriots, not the Kills leader) taking cracks at "Mushaboom", with both versions earning passing grades. Canadian emcee k-Os and the Postal Service also work over the track, each unable to resist adding their own vocals. The former massages the arrangement, but his precise, clipped vocals are less compelling than the languid, stream-of-consciousness raps that once successfully colored Massive Attack and Mo'Wax tracks. The Postal Service mix sounds like, well, the Postal Service-- low-whirring synths, a gently skipping rhythm, and Ben Gibbard's cozy vocals auditioning for the role of Feist's "man to stick it out/ Make a home from a rented house." And, who'd have thought, three years removed from the Give Up LP, the Postal Service template is still an oddly welcome combination.
Other highlights here come via the tracks that weren't as central to Let It Die-- an oddly hypnotic, 90s-retro version of "Lonely Lonely", VV's take on "One Evening", and the Birkin collaboration. Feist's spirited, democratic approach-- sharing space with friends on both her recordings and theirs, slipping easily to an vocal interpreter's role on covers, this remix album-- is delightfully loose, resulting in the sort of embraceable sound that her more well-known collective ran from on its overcooked self-titled album. Throughout it all, she's also managed to stamp an identity on her work, one that, if anything, is too dominant here. A more adventurous and well-rounded cast of collaborators-- a few more names from outside of her trusted circle-- may have enlivened the record, as Pearson did to "Inside & Out". Instead, it's a grab bag of more of the same, serving only to again spotlight the strengths we'd already located in these songs.
