Since The Reminder's release in May 2007, I've seen Feist play live three times. Turns out it was one time too many. The first, at 87-year-old midtown Manhattan fixture Town Hall, was quiet, seated, and quaint. Her voice was pristine and her strands of festive lights hung down just so. The second, at Brooklyn's emptied McCarren Park Pool, was spacious, breezy, and yet still quaint. She made a pool joke before starting "The Water" and she turned the concrete shell into a cozy sanctuary. Problems arose at a show this year inside NYC's cavernous Hammerstein Ballroom, though. By April, Feist was well into the victory lap stage of her Reminder stint-- between the Apple endorsement, the one-take videos, and (oh yeah) the near-perfect batch of broken-hearted tunes tying everything together, she tapped into a mainline somewhere between your mom's Bose CD alarm clock and your Nano. But even with the expanded fan base, The Reminder is big on music that's very tiny. It all but demands rapt attention. So the Hammerstein crowd-- boisterous, bored, and oblivious-- ignored her attempts at intimacy, waited for the song from the commercial, and then left soon after. The experience was disappointing, though it wasn't Feist's fault. That third show exposed how The Reminder's modesty could work against it-- how its no-frills profundity could be misread as a totally sweet Bed Bath & Beyond soundtrack. Of course, it's much more than that, as this timely reissue-- coupled with a bonus disc filled with videos, remixes, demos, and rarities-- um, reminds us. This is anti-cynic music made by a woman flighty enough to call her house the Unicorn Ranch yet wise enough to lace her bouncy smash with semi-depressing nostalgia. Take away the blue sequins, Gap dancers, and rainbow Nano-ization, and "1234" basically counts up the years until "money can't buy you back the love that you had then." For passers-by, Feist could be chalked up as a Lilith leftover, an Enya-style new age balm for our Crackberried brains. And The Reminder works on that level. The Village Voice slammed its "overall tenor of emotional feebleness and submission" while unfavorably comparing Feist to spiky former alt-rock heroines Liz Phair and Courtney Love. But, at the same time, the album isn't an easy-listening devolution as much as it's a considered maturation-- a path both Phair and Love have yet to tread. While that may sound a bit AARP, this 32-year-old Canadian makes growing up sound sexy and tough. She feels it all, but doesn't stamp and wail about it. Her most successful videos-- "1234" and "I Feel It All", both directed by Patrick Daughters-- are joyous affairs, but there's also an element of discipline involved. Both were shot in one take and choreographed to match precise camera moves. They're child's play that only an adult could pull off-- igniting synchronized fireworks to celebrate inevitable masochism ("I'll be the one who'll break my heart"). The clips highlight The Reminder's push-pull and make it clear that, with the right amount of creativity, synergy, and charisma, music videos still have the ability to spark mass culture 25 years after "Thriller". The remixes found on the bonus disc accentuate The Reminder's toe-tapping viability and slightly stretch indie dance night preconceptions. Sixteen-piece Brooklyn disco revivalists Escort put the Nile Rodgers impulses on hold for their take on "I Feel It All", instead giving the rhythm a winning marching band bent. And while Justice wannabe Boys Noize and 1980s synth fetishists Chromeo characteristically underline grooves for "My Moon, My Man" and "Sealion Woman" respectively, best in show goes to Australian remix group Van She Tech, whose remix provides a French-house "1234" workout that even Daft Punk would have trouble topping. It's the only truly necessary track on the bonus disc-- the type of song iTunes was invented for. The odds and ends that round out the bonus disc are superfluous at best, troublingly MOR at worst. Spare demos of "So Sorry" and Broken Social Scene favorite "Lover's Spit" don't match the well known originals. Scat-rap warning: Feist's generally embarrassing duet with Reminder co-producer Mocky, "Fightin' Away the Tears", comes way too close to Jason Mraz territory and suggests the knob twiddler should remain behind the boards. The Reminder is one of those very few supposedly star-making albums that actually made a star out of its creator. This is a great thing. But it can be discombobulating for an artist who toils in humble fallibility. For instance, it seems like Feist may have heard some of those loud chatterers at the Hammerstein Ballroom earlier this year: "(My career) has become kind of large and it really began for me very, very small-- like me alone in my bedroom with my four track and a pair of headphones," she told the Canadian Press recently. "I just need to go back there for a while to get my bearings again and then know what to do next." There's little reason to doubt her instincts.
Wavelength
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