The first I heard of Feist was way back in 2000. We were doing our second house concert and we somehow managed to set one up with Sarah Slean and Feist (later, Sarah Harmer was added, but that is a whole other story!). I had heard the name but I didn’t really know anything about her at the time. So when this slim blonde showed up in my living room and started playing a big, red, hollow-body guitar, I didn’t know what to think. Well, except that I really liked what she was doing. She signed a copy of her first album, Monarch, for us (”Thanks for letting me be an asshole in your living room!”) and then disappeared into the gloaming. For several years, there was nothing. Or at least it seemed that way. In reality, of course, she was busy with Peaches and Gonzales and Broken Social Scene and I was just not paying attention. But the rest of the world was. Or was about to.

When Let It Die was released, I ordered it from Arts+Crafts and was rather pleasantly surprised by the direction she had taken. I was also rather surprised by her appearance: the flowing, brown hair, the chic fashion. Obviously, it all fit the mood of the record, but it rather clashed with my memory of the somewhat goofy-looking woman who had graced one of the kitchen chairs. Most of all, I was quite surprised by the warm welcome it received from so many people since I was still under the mistaken impression that she was labo(u)ring in obscurity. That situation quickly became remedied and, as a result, I learned about Broken Social Scene; Peaches and Gonzales were familiar to me but the fact that Bitch Lap Lap = Feist has somehow escaped my notice.

Since then, I’ve caught several of her shows in the city — Joe’s Pub, The Knitting Factory, Webster Hall. Quite the deserved trajectory and enjoyed them all. The new material she was playing out in 2006 whetted my appetite for The Reminder and was not disappointed when it was released. Tour dates were highly anticipated. Jon Pareles’ New York Times feature announced that she’d be at Town Hall, a really nice mid-size theater in Midtown. Events conspired against me and the show sold out before I got tickets but a second show was added and I managed to score seats just left of center in the orchestra — perfect for taping. And it did not disappoint.

So, here, for my inaugural post on Waves And Wires, here are mp3s of Feist’s second show at Town Hall. Enjoy!

Note: these files are temporarily off-line. We’ll be reposting them soon as we can!

1. intro
2. Honey Honey
3. When I Was A Young Girl
4. So Sorry
5. My Moon My Man
6. The Park
7. The Limit To Your Love
8. I Feel It All
9. Anti-Pioneer
10. Now At Last
11. Brandy Alexander
12. Phantoms
13. The Water
14. 1234
15. Mushaboom
16. Intuition
17. Sealion
18. Let It Die

Download the whole show in mp3 as a single zip file.

Or, if you would prefer flacs, head on over to dimeadozen.org to download those via BitTorrent.

A couple notes: that’s Diane Pepper Montgomery tap-dancing during “Now At Last” (some may recall she did the same thing at Webster Hall in January 2006) and Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear and The Sky Choir sing-a-long on “1234″ (as they did on Late Night With Conan O’Brien the same day).

The recording has a couple small flaws: a mic pop on “Anti-Pioneer” and two more during “Phantoms”. Sorry ’bout that.

Links:

Official Site
Feist on Myspace

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 5:40 pm and is filed under concert, mp3.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.