Leslie Feist’s “Multitudes” is not an ordinary pop album, so don’t expect an ordinary show when she hits town this week.
During a mini-tour last year, she previewed the album with an elaborate show that broke barriers between her and the audience. The Canadian artist, who performs under her last name only, has since adapted that show to larger venues, and will bring it to the MGM Music Hall on Wednesday.
“I think that as an audience member myself, there’s something about disappearing into your velvet seat,” she said recently. “You arrive to receive something, but it’s up to you how much you’re going to give of yourself. (After the COVID shutdown) I felt more open to doing something that wasn’t expected. People had come through this transformative experience, so it was okay to be a little curious. So the show was an invitation to be delighted, and to check your irony at the door.”
The live show is also tied to the themes of the album, which include her adopting a daughter and losing her father, after the three were locked down together. “I can now say that the record doesn’t carry much of that experience, but the show really did. After the first few shows I would watch the wall drop between me and my ‘holding it together-ness.’ I’d never played a persona onstage but there’s a certain line you don’t cross, and I crossed it. It felt like those nightmares you have about going to school naked. And it felt very much like I was giving my grief a job.”
Though often quiet and subtle, the “Multitudes” album abounds with melodic twists and sonic surprises. Her concept for the album was somewhat abstract. “I was looking for a kind of emotional echo location — something without a lot of distraction or distortion, or any reverb to make it prettier. I knew that I didn’t want drums on most of the songs because I wanted the rhythm to be indicated in the way I sing. I wanted it to sound like a person being stripped of their masks — after that, what’s left? When a person has been bawling and their face is truly bare, there’s no more guile there.”
It was also crucial, she said, that a track called ‘Song for Sad Friends’ ended the album. “We needed to end in a stronger place, a declaration of owning your own place and own story. And friendships are supposed to be containers to actualize that.”
Feist had her brush with pop stardom in 2007, when “1234” because a top 40 single (to date her only one) after figuring in an IPod ad. It’s not an experience she’s anxious to repeat.
“It’s all so long ago now, and all I can remember is how strange it was. I had made a record and it wasn’t like I could identify one song that had more than any of the others– and if I had, it wouldn’t have been that one. So I had to adjust to that happening, rather than feeling like I had a master plan and landed there. So I couldn’t recreate a moment like that — Not that I’d want to, because it wasn’t the most pleasant time. I was just trying to keep the wheels on the road as the car started going 700 times faster. So I lived through that without being blown to bits.”