Feist - Let It Die

Genre rock Publisher Cherrytree/Interscope External Links Official Website Cherry Tree Records Interscope Records

Toronto's Broken Social Scene was the indie-rock scene's late 2003/early 2004 wet dream, an interminable convergence of classic college rock crunch and post-rock spew unjustly heralded to Next Big Thing proportions. While the underground awaits BSS's next shot at living up to hype they don't deserve, Calgary-born, current Parisian Leslie Feist - you may remember her vocal turn on "Almost Crimes" from BSS' You Forgot It In People or her singing on Peaches' The Teaches Of Peaches - lunges for the hearts and wallets of National Public Radio/Entertainment Weekly (for real, they ran a sidebar feature!) subscribers everywhere with Let It Die.

Feist leapfrogs from one era or style to the next with seductive, effortless elan, as though she spent years breathing, eating, and performing the bejeezus out of these 11 songs before entering the studio to record. She vocally struts through a bold cover of the Bee-Gee's "Inside and Out" that infuses that band's creation with in-your-face sass, while Feist original "One Evening" is so disco-primed and funky the "Stayin' Alive" songwriters should've come up with it first. She lays into the traditional composition "When I Was A Young Girl" in To Bring You My Love-era P.J. Harvey style, she smoulders through the gospel-esque title track; by the end of Let it Die, it seems as though there is nothing this woman cannot do, and do so well that one wonders why she'd bother guesting on anybody else's records.