To me, the percussion on this album sits somewhere between electronic and acoustic. And so one of the most impressive elements of this album is immediately evident: the percussion sounds and arrangement. The first song on Metals, 'The Bad In Each Other', cracks into you with its opening percussive thwacks. It can be playful, like a shrug, and then mournful, like a howl, from one moment to the next. Her voice is pure nature – the sound of rocks, tree bark, soil, storms, minerals (metals!). When I listen to Leslie Feist’s voice, it’s as if cracks in a stone cliff are opening up to reveal hidden pools. So at the heart of my love for Feist is this association with kindred spirits. He remains one of my closest friends today he still has that shirt and often wears it when we meet up across coasts. On the first day of college, as I waited in line to enter the auditorium and accept my position in the class of 2011 at Kenyon College, I became fast friends with a boy wearing a Feist shirt. We were just hungry musicians wanting to learn, feeding off the darkness, the geometry, and the sound.įeist has been a comforting character to me for years. We were neither high nor drunk, as young adults in basements listening to music often are. In this focused environment, we surrendered ourselves to each of the songs, suspended in a web of awed togetherness. I had never listened to music this way before, with the lights off and the iTunes visualizer making its random magic. This is how I first heard Feist’s Metals: a synesthetic experience in a basement with two of my best friends. Then the sound begins and brings fire to our minds. Our faces are slack as universes holding the fixed planets of our eyes. Shapes dance and twist onscreen, reflected as a protean glare in our irises. The laptop placed ceremoniously before us suddenly comes to life, first with colour and light. We turn off the lights in the basement and settle ourselves against cushions on the floor.