We recorded our session with Feist at the Village Studios, where she was joined by a full band, including the ladies from Mountain Man on backing vocals. It was one of her first times performing songs from her new album “Metals” and she talked to Jason Bentley quite a bit about how the album came about.
She took a much-needed break after pretty much 7 straight years of touring behind her hugely successful album “The Reminder”. She took a hiatus from everything before even attempting to write again.
“It was about a year and a half before I got curious again about writing and really I guess that’s what it is. It’s just curiosity. You have to…songwriting is a bit of framing, you sort of frame things…you start to look at things in a certain light or something. And it’s not something you can decide to do,” said Feist.
“I mean, some people have that skill, but I really don’t. It’s really about a turn of phrase or a certain melody or just a day, like overcastiness or bright or whatever. And everything converges to make me honestly just curious and want to frame something.”
She also talked about how she crafts individual songs.
“It’s not that plucking a melody from the air thing so much as it is truly archeological dig-style, digging around in sand and it’s just…it’s almost quicksand, you just brush it away and then more arrives. You never know what you’re going to uncover. A little tiny shard of pottery and then you can speak of an entire mythological civilization. You have to paint a bigger picture from the tiny things you find.”
If that doesn’t make you want to hear what she came up with, I don’t know what will!
Enjoy the full session in our archives here.
RR