The musician returns Multitudes, the sixth album composed while in custody. And there are questions with power and grace, our relationship with the other, with time, and with femininity.
Six years of absence, and it is a voice and a presence that we have missed. All of us, knowingly or not, have crossed paths with Feist’s music. whether we sang the hit “1234” that brought him international recognition in 2007 as the soundtrack to a commercial for a digital music player. Or that we keep one of his songs in our playlists like a talisman, whether it’s a childhood anthem (“Mushaboom,” the title track that revealed it in 2003) or a joy (“Pleasure,” on the self-titled album in 2007).
A six-year absence and the Canadian musician is back Multitudes, an album created as the Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. In detention, Leslie Feist experienced the two saddest experiences of life almost simultaneously: the birth of a child (the little girl was adopted at the end of 2019) and the loss of a parent (her father, the artist Howard). Feist). Multitudes therefore, he turns to the intimate, built around his guitar, which he plays like a virtuoso, and his voice. Two elements that multiply, split, and unfold to create a world full of grace, hope, and fury. Like ours, to which he felt more connected than ever.
In the video, Feist’s “Hiding Out In The Pen” clip.
Bereavement and motherhood
Madame Figaro. Multitudes primarily a folk album built around your guitar and your voice. Where does this exposure come from?
Feist:It all started about three years ago when the pandemic hit and we went into lockdown. Suddenly, writing songs, recording, and going on tour… All those normal things seemed meaningless. It almost seemed as if we were entering a dystopian, or perhaps a utopian era. we will be living in our own communities, no more getting on airplanes… Like everyone else on Earth, I was isolated and had to come to terms with this new reality. was going to happen, and the questions it raised. Moreover, I had just become a mother, four months ago.
When you have a toddler, you try to regain some semblance of the inner life you once had.
Feist:
How did that affect the album?
Writing songs kept me company. When you have a baby, you strive to regain some semblance of the inner life you once had. To have longer thoughts than those who deal with problems that need to be solved immediately, or others that touch the sublime. For example, when you look into your child’s eyes, you feel as if you are in touch with the great mystery of the universe, the very origin of life. And it goes as fast as you think about where you put the lotion (laughs). In this context, the writing took a strange, unfamiliar course. For me, it has always been a way of making sense of the puzzle that surrounds me. This time I just got carried away by what I was going through.
Outside of detention, we have a feeling you like to stay away. For example, we see very little of you on social media…
But social media isn’t reality, is it? We are all supposed to feed them, all the time. I understand their usefulness. when the Black Lives Matter revolution happened, I felt that something collective was happening that needed to be understood. So I went back to networks to learn. But I don’t think they are necessary. Maybe it’s because I’m a generation that spent its twenties without a cell phone. I remember receiving letters. And put up concert posters on the streets of Toronto.
Be part of a whole
As often, in Multitudes , you use your voice as an instrument that interprets both the melody and backing vocals and adds texture to the songs. Is it some conversation you have with yourself?
It’s more about allowing all the voices we perceive within us to be heard. That’s something I started to feel in detention. suddenly I was alone and saw the world as if through a glass. You start thinking about a lot of things when you find yourself sitting in the dark for hours, unable to move, holding a very small person. I remembered this taxi driver I met in Cairo, a man who sold me fruit on a street corner, all these people I had interacted with, even the smallest. I suddenly realized that they were all going through the same thing as me. It’s the first time I’ve experienced this multitude of which we’re all a part in such an amazing way. And it’s definitely because of the baby-wearing, but I also felt a form of horizontal “multiplicity,” imagining how my mother, grandmother, and my daughter’s ancestors behaved. I also felt who I was at the age of 8, who I will be at the age of 98. After becoming a mother, I realized that my daughter is at the beginning of life, and I am in the middle. That I am not immortal.
Time becomes elastic during mourning. a second seems like an eternity.
Feist:
You also lost your father, right after your daughter was born…
And when this unimaginable event happened, my tour had just been booked. Of course, I could cancel everything. But I needed something to do, my pain needed a job. I don’t know how I would have done otherwise. Time becomes elastic during mourning. a second seems like an eternity. But that was the only thing I could do. my pain would be able to be expressed through these songs, even though not everyone deals with this topic. And the concerts themselves, which started a year after my father’s death, acted as a collective ritual.
Collective dialogue
one of the songs Multitudes is called Woman of humanity , which can be roughly translated as “About Femininity”. Pretentious title, what did you have to say on this topic?
It’s a song that came to me in the middle of the night. I was surprised to hear it again in the morning, a bit like discovering a text you sent someone while you were half asleep. I felt like I was witnessing a dialogue between my grandmother, if she was still alive, and Generation Z. I was accompanied by many young women as I welcomed my daughter as the world went through a sea of change. I’ve talked to them a lot about the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements. I was grateful to them because they helped me put them into context. They have their own new vocabulary and show great wisdom. My upbringing did not give rise to these kinds of conversations, both intimately and relationally. By learning from them, I also feel like I have more to pass on to my daughter. I had to refresh myself on femininity.
How has your vision changed?
This song is not a manifesto. women, femininity, these are many voices that don’t necessarily sound like mine. This is a collective dialogue, no one opinion is more enlightened than the other. There are so many truths that exist simultaneously. But there is one question we can ask ourselves: the word “humanity” (“humanity”, English, editor’s note) gathers everyone, whoever we are. Like an umbrella that will shelter every person in their smallest nuances. But who comes under the word “femininity”? What if we could all relate to that?
Control the time
In one of the interviews, you said that some songs make life more understandable. one Multitudes does it perform this function?
“In Lightning,” which opens the album, sounds like instructions I’m giving myself. This song is a way to remember that time passes through my body. In 3 years I will be 50 years old. It makes no sense, sometimes I always feel like I’m 20 years old. And yet, this is the craziest time for a woman. In our 20s or 30s, we still feel eternal, we have the impression that adulthood is a fixed point that we will reach one day and that will remain unchanged. All my senior friends are laughing. they tell me they are all old ideas. So I try to tell myself that the best is yet to come. Even if the background noise is trying to tell me otherwise.
What is this background noise and where is it coming from?
In my early 40s, I suddenly realized that time passes, it passes through our bodies, and there are social consequences to all of this. I have a great friend who says that when a woman’s face ages, society considers it a crime. Almost like we did something wrong. So let’s consider an alternative. you can’t fight against time. But we can break down all these notions we have of ourselves as objects seen from the outside. The older we get, the more we enrich ourselves from within. We deepen our understanding of things like pain or grief. But we also continue to forge our sense of humor. And I think keeping a sense of humor is very important.
Source: Le Figaro
