Six years is a mighty long time to retreat from music by anybody’s estimation. 2011’s Metals was the last we heard from the Canadian singer-songstress, Feist but now she has returned with the triumphant Pleasure – an album that mixes dark atmospherics, rattling distress and methodic songwriting. Leslie Feist grew in the charts with the surprise hit ‘1234’, a song that brought big success in the UK, US, Canada and more – in fact, you can name any country and the song probably reached the top 10. Not the type to be a one hit wonder, Feist has shown that around the novelty of that track she can build an empire of greatness, Pleasure simply adds further to this.

The album-titled track opens affairs with a gnarling guitar hook, dragging ambience in between the riffs showing that a tenderness can exist in coordination. ‘Pleasure’ stands as Feist’s most demonstrative piece of rock’n’roll on the album, it’s the closest we reach to something chaotic and perhaps the most rock-leaning piece Feist has ever released. The tenderness that is angled and squeezed between big guitar lines exhibits her maturity in songwriting though – toying with genre and stylistics with confidence and ease. It is this tenderness that flourishes throughout the 11 tracks though – from ‘Baby Be Simple’ through to ‘I Wish I Didn’t Miss You’, Leslie Feist’s voice and nimble musical articulation add a warm outline to every second of the 53 minute listen.

The Jarvis Cocker-featuring ‘Century’ recently preceded the album as the second single. It is a sumptuous affair that collides Britain’s favourite crooner with the quirky tendencies of Leslie Feist, a marriage of two artists who love to exploit the emptiness in tracks with their own raw detail. Commencing proceedings with thundering percussion, the track carries a throttling energy from the off with Feist’s coarse vocals pumping injections of Patti Smith fury.

Always one to observe the outside and the environment around us, Feist focuses her penchant for naturalism once more, just as she did on the Polaris award winning Metals. Tracks such as ‘The Wind’ demonstrate lyrical wordplay that picks at nature’s beauty and similarly, nature’s force: “The wind that will bring me / Out to you / Is a wind that gets singing / Whipping at the tune”. This demonstration of personification ripples throughout more than half of the album, perhaps the finest example sitting with the thriving blues of ‘I’m Not Running Away’: “The difference between night and day / We watch the moon rise and all that indicates / I got a home in you that noon illuminates”, working the elements into the natural emotion of love.

To listen to the tracks on Pleasure in isolation doesn’t necessarily do the album justice or, for that matter, the music behind it. It’s an album that works in the context of its own self, the bolstering rock of ‘Lost Dreams’ with its talk of epiphany and realisation (And I saw all about his goodness became so / Bad-ass blacking out and it's called the name of love) cuddles into place with the cooling fondness of ‘A Man Is Not His Song’.

Melodies grow within songs rather than emerge with immediacy, it feels though that this lack of immediacy works in the context of the album and its songwriting. The hook behind ‘Get Not High, Get Not Low’ brings about the album’s real standout chorus, but it’s towards the back end of the track when you are met with this. Similarly, the album’s sometimes confused genre seems to play into its lack of immediacy – it’s a sound that provides no obvious pinpoint, swimming between blues, folk, rock’n’roll and ambient. Perhaps though, with Feist, this works in her favour. Other artists have often fumbled with genre play, treating it with no coherence and ultimately searching in the dark with no sign of light. Feist’s delicacy and clever wordplay though bring about a story and running order, manifesting beauty in something which shouldn’t necessarily work. Pleasure is ultimately a warming affair, an album that stands between the likes of Nick Cave, PJ Harvey and The Dead Weather – it treats you like a lover, knowing when to play it cool and when to show a caring side.
Tom Churchill

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