Feist: Look At What The Light Did Now

Videos by American Songwriter

Feist
Look At What The Light Did Now
(Interscope)
[Rating: 3.5 stars]

Woozy, soft-focus concert footage–the glow of camera flashes and cigarette lighters rendered as a blur of colored dots–immediately introduces the recurring theme of this documentary about Canada’s queen of ethereal indie-folk, Leslie Feist. Her music and videos are all about the play of light and shadow, and the artful sleight of hand that makes small, subtle details blaze larger than life. This is captured perfectly by her live stage show, which incorporates giant projected silhouettes and floating light images designed by puppeteer and artist Clea Minaker. In fact, this gentle tour diary is less a biography of the young singer-songwriter and more an exploration of how Feist’s haunting, minimalistic pop music gets transformed into a dazzlingly visual live act that employs dozens of crew members and requires two large truckloads of equipment.

Key scenes revolve around the recording of Feist’s 2007 album The Reminder at a cozy, 19th-century manor house outside of Paris, with picturesque shots of the sprawling band huddling in the parlor, improvising and playing homemade percussion. The self-effacing Feist makes it clear that her music is a joyfully collaborative affair, and viewers will come away with a new appreciation of the man-hours of labor and planning that can go into such deceptively austere music.

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