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Nobody, least of all Feist, anticipated the tremendous response listeners around the world would have to Let It Die. Her response? To keep touring. Thirty-three months and three continents were covered. The
Reminder was written and conceptualized on the way. When the road was finally exhausted, it spat her out at La Frette. A 200 year old manor house in the outskirts of Paris. Our girl corralled her live band - Julian Brown, Bryden Baird and Jesse
Baird - and invited Gonzales, Mocky and Jamie Lidell to help harness the sound. They filled the dining room and parlour with a piano, vibrophones, organs, guitars, amps.. shoved two drum kits against the stained glass windows and scattered
microphones like mousetraps around wood-floored rooms. You can hear the dogs barking on the tracks recorded live in between bites of their apples and walks in the garden. Like kids at a rock 'n' roll summer camp, Feist and her talented comrades hung
out in their pajamas making The Reminder.
Brandy Alexander with it's sucker-punch melody tumbling over a kick drum heartbeat. The jangly Dusty In Memphis teen dream paean 1234. With perennial collaborator Gonzales, she came up with The Limit To
Your Love, an ominous slow-burner in which Feist becomes Nico over hard-soul piano chords and Mo Tucker percussion. Live fave Sea Lion Woman, the traditional chant famously covered by Nina Simone, got propelled into the stratosphere with cell phone
sounding synths, handclaps and a backing mini-gospel choir. The shimmering, plaintive The Water immerses Feist's stunning vocals in layers of vibraphone and piano, letting haunted allegorical lyrics about stoic mountains, a clumsy and dangerous sea
and little bone piles slowly emerge from the depths. Intuition unspools with fragile fingerpicked guitar, Feist playing call and response with the distant chorus of a crowd.
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