Concert Reviews

Feist
At Deer Lake Park on Tuesday, August 5

It’s hard to say why, exactly, but Leslie Feist seemed obsessed with the water. Maybe it was due to the scorching heat that preceded her set on Tuesday, or maybe it was the fact that the stage at Burnaby’s Deer Lake Park sat so close to the lake itself, but the Calgary-raised and Toronto-based chanteuse couldn’t stop talking about all things nautical during her 90-minute concert.

Sporting yacht-club-issue gear, with the singer in a white dress mottled with splashes of neon orange and yellow and her backing musicians in head-to-toe white outfits, Feist and her band launched into the thumping blues of “When I Was a Young Girl” just after 8:30 p.m.

Breakout hit “Mushaboom” followed, with the Juno winner donning an acoustic guitar for the bubbly number. Silhouetted images of plants being watered were projected behind the group while a crew member rushed to the stage during the tune’s honky-tonk piano solo, showering Feist with a bucketful of confetti flowers.

After barrelling through the spunky alt-country of “I Feel It All”, the performer’s backup band took a breather. “Anyone have a boat?” she asked the crowd as she stood alone for the sultry sea chantey “Honey Honey”.

Hunched over her microphone, Feist began layering a series of vocal lines atop one another before crooning a melancholy verse. The tune’s middle section found her ditching looped backups in favour of voices from the audience, conducting men and women in their respective contributions of haunting oohs and aaahs. “Together you are the mer-people,” she marvelled as she clutched her cherry-red electric guitar to her chest.

A twangy cover of Lucinda Williams’s “Over Time” kept things mellow while the band stood backstage—“Those boys are such rock ’n’ rollers,” Feist joked of the quiet interlude—but the second the foursome sauntered back to their instruments for “1234”, a surge of excitement shot through the crowd.

Frantically dancing and clapping along to the iPod anthem, the fans quickly fell out of time, much to the vocalist’s chagrin. “You’re clapping on the opposite beat,” she said, laughing at the rhythmically challenged. “Maybe you should change your excitement to singing.”

Unfortunately, the feel-good vibe left over from that fan favourite took a quick nosedive as the band dialled down the rock for the tepid dad-jazz number “Gatekeeper.” “It’s probably hard to plan ahead,” Feist cooed, likely unaware that the sickeningly smooth track would prove such a downer.

Fortunately, she rebounded with an inspired performance of “I’m Sorry”, which had her calling out once again to her singing sea creatures. “I’m going to milk this mer thing,” she told the audience. Mixing her metaphors, the artist asked Deer Lake to sing like wolves facing the moon as her outfit slid into a breezy wash of melodica and glockenspiel.

Gospel rave-up “Sea Lion Woman” was the night’s most intense performance, as Feist channelled both Tina Turner and a southern preacher for the raucous track. Scandalously sexy legs cancanned on the screen behind the band, while four-part harmonies and steady tambourine hits built up to a crashing finale.

Tossing her guitar to the side, Feist quivered along to Jesse Baird’s pummelling tom-tom beats, shuffling her feet and whipping her long chestnut hair about before letting out some fiercely feral screams.

“Let It Die” finished the 15-song set on a bittersweet note. “Here’s a very sad song to leave a little pool of sadness at the bottom of your heart,” Feist proclaimed before crying out about “the saddest part of a broken heart”. With an adoring Deer Lake crowd standing in quiet awe throughout the breakup ballad, it turns out that the saddest part is actually watching Feist walk off-stage.