Gig review: Feist, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

By FIONA SHEPHERD
Published on 28/03/2012 01:38

So FAR this year, Leslie Feist has made a cameo appearance in The Muppets and hatched plans to release a split single with hirsute hardcore metal band Mastodon, for which they will record versions of each other’s songs.

This Canadian singer/songwriter certainly likes to cover the waterfront when it comes to her musical endeavours.

Such open-mindedness extends to her own material, which traverses the genres yet is delivered with the same mellow ease of expression. Over the course of her four-album solo career, Feist has become the hipster’s choice of easy listening, an impression bolstered by the reaction to such flimsy whimsy as The Circle Married the Square.

Feist is rarely that supine though. What some of the more leftfield selections in her set lacked in outright tunefulness, was made up for with intriguing instrumentation, not least a table of percussive implements, and the sublime singing of her backing trio Mountain Man, who wielded their tambourines and vocalised hypnotically like pagan priestesses.

Among the more conventional gratifying moments were the beguiling chorus of the appropriately haunted Graveyard and former single How Come You Never Go There, which acquired greater muscle in its live incarnation.

Maintaining that energy, Feist coaxed the crowd to their feet for rousing renditions of My Moon My Man and A Commotion, on which her siren trio had a ball, but was just as commanding on a pin-drop solo encore and bonus cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Sometimes Always, performed with support act M Ward.

Rating: ****