July 11, 2023 • 46 mins
Today we’re doing something a little different. We’re sharing an episode from another podcast we love called Broken Record! On Broken Record, acclaimed producer Rick Rubin, bestselling author Malcom Gladwell, and others interview storied musicians from every genre about their lives, inspiration, and music. Norah has been a guest herself but today we’re sharing a recent episode with Feist! You can find more Broken Record, from Pushkin Industries, wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Nora Jones and today I'm playing along with
Broken Record Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm just playing lone we say.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, I'm Norah Jones, and today we're doing something a
little different. We're sharing a fantastic episode from another podcast
that we love. It's called Broken Record. On Broken Record,
acclaimed producer Rick Rubin, best selling author Malcolm Gladwell, and
others interview storied musicians from every genre about their lives,
(00:31):
inspiration and music. I was a guest of Broken Record
back in November of twenty nineteen in the early days
of the podcast. I got to talk to Malcolm Gladwell
and Bruce Headlam. Be sure to check that out if
you get a chance. Today, we're sharing a recent interview
with Feist. She is one of my favorites. I love
her so much, and this episode of the Broken Record
(00:54):
podcast is so good because she goes really deep about
her music and her life, and I think it's the
most I've ever heard her talk about her music. In April,
Feist released her sixth album, Multitudes and It's Beautiful. It's
an album she wrote in the wake of losing her
father and after becoming a first time mother. Just months
(01:15):
before the pandemic began. Today we'll hear Broken Record podcast
producer Leah Rose talk to Feis about the new album
and how she was inspired to make new music after
performing at an experimental music festival in Berlin. She also
talks about things in her life that happened and explains
how she found solace in writing new songs amidst the
exhaustion of early motherhood. So here's the episode. I really
(01:38):
hope you enjoy it as much as I did. You
can listen to more episodes of Broken Record from Pushkin
Industries wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Pushkin. Canadian born singer songwriter five has been one of
the most dynamic indie voices of the last two decades.
She scored international fame early in her career, thanks in
part to a nano iPod commercial featuring the song one, two,
three four, But for fans of Feist, her appeal lies
(02:15):
in how she mines her complex emotional life. Just last month,
Feist released her sixth album, Multitudes. She recorded it in
the aftermath of tremendous personal loss and change. In late
twenty nineteen. Feist adopted a baby just months before the
pandemic started. About a year later, her father died suddenly.
(02:37):
Multitudes is a raw and intimate look at how she
grappled with deep seated grief and a new kind of love.
On today's episode, Lea Rose talks with Feist about how
being assaulted in high school ultimately led to her gaining resilience.
Feist also remembers the day her music career began when
she was asked to front a hardcore band, and how
(02:59):
screaming on age and ultimately blowing out her voice forced
her to develop her intimate, career defining singing style. This
is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm
justin Ritchman. Here's Lea Rose with Feist.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I have read the PR blurb about the new album,
but I would love to hear in your words, just
talk about how the project started to come together.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yes, well, everything was pretty topsy turvy, there wasn't it.
I mean, there was a complete reframe. There was no
presumption of the way things used to be is the
way they're going to be. And interestingly, the outside world
was sort of echoing what was going on for me
in my inside world, which was that nothing was to
(03:49):
be presumed, nothing that had been was going to be
because I had just become a mother right four months
before the pandemic started, so it was sort of a
double down of complete reassessment. And you know, a friend
of mine said something that has become unfortunately so true.
I mean, fortunately unfortunately that to become a parent is
(04:11):
to be incinerated and so true. But who rises from
the ashes is a more interesting person to be for
the rest of your life. And I'm still working on that.
I'm trying to figure out if if this is more interesting, but.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I know it's like I just feel like a like
depleted version but hopefully eventually more interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Well, the way I've been looking at it is the
person who decided to the person who felt capable of
being a mother to decided to become a mother, she
was actually not very useful and not very helpful at
being a mother. So you know, that was then echoed
by the whole world kind of being uncomfortable with their
(04:54):
former selves that didn't serve them anymore in this new context.
And every I felt like everywhere I looked, any and
close to me, let alone, kind of collectively, there was
just this crucible that was just incinerating every presumption that
came from a previous time, you know, And so songs
kind of they became what there they always have been
(05:14):
to me, but like they certainly were even more so
a kind of a habit that I returned to that
brought me comfort or like a it might be in
that incineration, some last living arm lunged out of the
quicksand like ah and grabbed it a little filament of
a former self or something, because I found it really
(05:35):
helped me to use some of those wee hours and
those sort of that liminal state of pure exhaustion and
to open myself to that and and a lot of
new things and new parts of me were very slowly
given a little a place to you know, work out
(05:57):
what that was going to look like in in the
form of songs. So it was, you know, kind of
like a like some people return to hiking, or they
get they go swimming, clear their head, they you know,
whatever they've done their whole life to return to a
kind of a privacy that is going to maybe help
them like untangle something. In my very fortunate case, I've
(06:20):
always found that in writing a song over the years,
like I can almost every one of my songs has
in some way been my attempt to understand some unknowable moments.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Are there any songs on the new album that directly
relate to being a new parent that helped you articulate
something that you couldn't quite grasp before.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Well, I would say the only song that you know
she will know was about her is the song Forever Before,
which I think might be the second song I think.
And it came from this idea that to commit so intentionally,
to walk so directly right towards the precipice of complete vulnerability,
(07:05):
is to become a mother. And I had never begun
a Forever Before. I mean, that was sort of there
was no sidling out of that commitment. It was a
true commitment. And you know, as much as I feel
that I have been committed to things in my life
before I've shown all the way up to different things
and different relationships and different ways of thinking or ways
(07:28):
of being, the ways of relating, I had never done
something that could not be undone or that I hope
will never be undone. It is. It's the first, one
hundred percent, just like dive dive in, you know, And
so that song kind of helped in a way. It
chronologically over the three verses. It's sort of it's like
(07:49):
a little parenthesis around maybe the years leading up to
understanding the basis of my life and how it was
no longer enough or something, and how that I wanted
to expand and make myself prone to the unknown.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
On your song Borrow Trouble, there's some lyrics that talk
about picturing a life that you are left out of
and how that is maybe different than what you imagined,
And it seems to me like you're now trying to
appreciate a life that you've created for yourself.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Yeah, I would say I found the idea years ago
that like, if I can't make it better, if it's
out of with it not within my power to make
it better, it being what, you know, whatever, I'm in
the midst of chying to face or solve like psychicalge
break equation of like solve for X. It's like the
X is ever changing and it is ever present, and
(08:49):
it's just going to shape shift and always be something
to need to solve. And if I can't make it better,
at least I can learn how to not make it worse.
And to not make it worse means you not spin
my wheels in and concretized thinking or learning actually what
the mechanics of passive aggressivity is and what it is
(09:11):
to And that's another thing about to commit to the
words that come out of your mouth. It's sort of
bootcamp for committing to the steps you take towards in
which directions and all of that, I guess is it's
sort of been the quiet background of all the work
I've done in my life and my mind. And as
art imitates life, songs the songs these songs in particular
(09:34):
have taken the form of like a roadmap or as
we all self mythologize, you know in our you don't
and as friends who work very different they have different
jobs than me, friends who don't get a response from
the world about what their work is. They say, hey,
don't kid yourself. I have the exact same self mythologizing.
(09:57):
I invest in the lore of my life. What is
you know, the background of my childhood and what it
did to me and how it created the expectations that
I then had to fight to. You know, It's just
that in my case, I work it out in this
way that can then be like a silly, petty puzzle
piece that someone people can take it and then reform
(10:18):
it to fit the puzzle that they're trying to solve.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
You know, yeah, I'm curious, like, what were you like
in high school? What were you into?
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Like?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
What kind of kid were you in high school?
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Well? I suppose I was probably kind of shy, but
I also had started to go to all the punk
shows in my town, and I had assumed the exterior
of looking other than what I was on the inside.
And I was sort of you know, I had piercings
and shaved my head and it was manic panic and
(10:52):
I was. And I went to a pretty conservative high school.
And maybe in the first couple of maybe the first
month or two or something of my first year of
high school, I was attacked by a group of guys,
not like I mean, here I am making excuses for them,
like not violently, but come on, Like I was lifted
up and slammed into a wall and handcuffed to a door.
(11:14):
And then I've actually never told this story except to friends,
but at this point I kind of understand how this was.
All The adversity I was against was like ultimately helpful
but very difficult. But the whole student body, you know,
no one came to my aid. They created kind of
like a giant school size semi circle around me, and
(11:37):
you know, laughed and jeered and snickered, and then we're
shooed into the cafeteria. And then the vice principal, I guess,
after like half an hour or something, I got un
handcuffed and was completely in shock. And then he he
was like, who did this? And I said, I don't know.
They came up from behind me, and he said, that's
(11:59):
why we don't want kids like you here. And then
he made me walk through the entire cafeteria in front
of him, while he walked behind me through a dead
silent cafeteria so that I would tell him who had
done this, and up and down the rows of the
different seats while the only sound in the cafeteria was
my own crying because I was, you know, choking in
(12:20):
my like, and I was being marched up and down
these aisles. And then you know, in the silence, someone
screamed freak and then the and then twelve hundred people laughed,
and I'd say that was the basis of my high school.
And I started skipping, and I started going to like
more and more shows and not really knowing where to
go and what to be and what to do. And
(12:42):
luckily these girls came up to me in the hallway
and they were like, hey, you go to all those shows, right,
but aren't you in the choir because I had found
the choir at that school. And I was like, yeah,
I'm in the choir and I go to all the shows.
And they're like, well, we need a singer for our band.
Do you wanna do you want to join in our band?
And I was like, without that, I have no idea
(13:04):
where I would have ended up. And then I transferred
myself to an alternative school and I didn't tell my mom,
didn't even know, you know, it was like maybe many
months in the school contacted her and said, Leslie's expelled.
She hasn't shown up, and my mom was like, assumed
I was just completely and I was like, no, no, no,
I just didn't tell you because I knew you would
probably make it even harder for me to just pull
(13:26):
this off. So I just did it. And I was
at this alternative school and I was in this band
and like, you know, kind of turned that frown upside
down sort of thing through the support of like genuine
community did.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
You tell your parents about the incident with the being handcuffed.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Yes, my mom, I didn't live with my dad was
across the country, but yeah, I told my mom. And
I think that, you know, she had just watched her
daughter change so radically that she might have just been
so frustrated that like she you know, let's just say
that it's in recent years, I've recontextualized, hey ps. Nowadays,
(14:05):
luckily there's language to meet this type of moment that
at the time there was no language for. And I
can say that I'm grateful that now, like you know,
the gradations of experience that any single word can carry
within it is now at least available to be evoked
when it needs to be because that principle, you know,
(14:28):
like I can still get angry. I can still think
I need to find out who that was. I need
to write an open letter to that school letting them
know how. You know, they might be like, ooh, will
you come speak at our graduation. It's like, well, I
might have something to say that you don't necessarily want
to hear, but it was a different time, and not
to excuse it, but I can say that, like it
(14:49):
just we all know it to be true, it was
a different time. There was no vocabulary around this, and
without that, I don't know where I would be. And
so it's like anything that that helps you grow or
causes you to have to unavoidably find some interior basis
for understanding, and you can cave into bitterness or you
(15:11):
can you know, and I'm sure I had many years
of caving into bitterness, but something else rose from it
that I'm grateful for.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
When did you start writing songs?
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Well, in that band, I suppose was the beginning of songwriting,
even though we were doing it together. It was baby
steps in lyrics and you know who's the narrator? Is
this first person? Is this dream sequence? Is this stream
of consciousness? Or just you know, melody? But it was
a hardcore band, so ultimately our main asset was volume
(15:46):
and yeah, and melody came a lot later. I mean
there was melody I suppose at that time, but it
was mostly I didn't play guitar. I just was the
front person and I and volume was you know, kind
of where what I leaned on. And yeah, so many
years later, after I blew my voice out on tour
(16:06):
with that band, like just from screaming, I ended up
kind of under doctor's orders to you know, stay silent.
I had nodes. I had the whole that period of regenerating,
and I learned. I kind of taught myself to begin
to play guitar at that time when I when I
was in this sort of imposed silence and I'd had
to quit the band. I'd moved to Toronto. I you know,
(16:29):
I was living in my dad's basement and just like
kind of dealing with my first dose of isolation. And
what I found there was you know, melody essentially.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Do you remember some of the first songs you wrote
once you started playing guitar.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Yeah. I also had this thing called a melodica, which
is kind of like a wooden boxed miniature xylophone that
I was really and also had a four track. My
dad had given me a cassette four track a task
am and I had started with layers and singing harmonies
and making these long overtones with the metallophone, and I
(17:05):
kind of maybe something like sound sculptures using the radio,
using interference and just kind of playing with the form,
and like maybe the first songs they wrote the kind
of clunky first you know, broad strokes attempts were you know,
it's like now I listen to them and it's like
the touching yearbook photo kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Where do you identify with any of the lyrics?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Still, maybe there was a there was a kind of
a sensibility and interest in metaphor already. Was there a
kind of wordplay? You know? I can hear now the
kind of grandfathered in sort of tendencies to like how
to speak around a subject rather than directly to it. Yeah,
(17:50):
I guess I wouldn't like sit and like probably cover
any of I would say, n see, I'm even calling
it covering, like as if it's not my own.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
That's so interesting a former self, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Yeah, I probably wouldn't cover her songs, but I can
appreciate that there's some DNA there.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
We're going to take a quick break and then come
back with more from Leo Rose and Feist. We're back
with Leo Rose and Feist.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
What do you think that you do as a songwriter
as a performer? What do you think you do especially
well or what are you the best at?
Speaker 4 (18:34):
That's a nice question. I don't know that I can
really characterize it in words. There's like a location in
me that is interested in all sorts of variables and
how they cross over, and maybe I on this record
in particular, I was interested in kind of unseating some
of my tendencies and seeing what might be behind them. And there's,
(18:59):
maybe for the first time in my life, an awareness
that there's a kind of a rigor and a craft
and an interest in craft that I wouldn't have known
with my frontal lobe previously, I wouldn't have really thought
that's what I'm doing. But I'm kind of I continue
to learn from what came before, Like everything I've done
previously is sort of composted into the new body of work,
(19:22):
and I've can I can say to people I'm working with,
like this feels a little bit like mush of Boom's
great granddaughter or something like there's some there's some DNA,
there's something in here that is or like if Century
and Sea Lion had had a love child, that might be,
you know, a bort of Trouble or something like that.
(19:45):
Or but yeah, so there's a lineage maybe in what
I've made so far that that makes me curious about
what will come next or how that perspective will continue
to be interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Do you feel like the character that you've created, or
do you feel like there even is a character that
you've created through your work? And if so, is that
person you or is it similar to you? Or does
that make sense?
Speaker 4 (20:19):
It does? It does? It makes more sense now than ever.
I feel like an alignment has occurred where I now
know I owe nothing to the avatar, you know, the
thing that is refracted by this particular light that's shined
on this thing I do society that our society shines
(20:40):
this particular timbre of light is quality of light on
what I do, and it refracts out beyond me and
in some cases maybe leans a little bit too much
importance on it in a way that is on the surface.
I've learned that my investment in this very private conversation
with myself, yeah, and my voice being like literally and
(21:01):
then part of my anatomy that over many years I
learned to listen to from the inside rather than from
the outside. And and so it's kind of like I've
never thought about this before, but imagine like a you know,
like how a door knob reaches through a door, and
on one side you can turn it to go in,
and on the other side you can turn it to
(21:21):
go out, And those are two different gestures, but there
is the same portal. It's the same desire to move through.
And so my voice or the way I've chosen to
try to formulate not this not only the sound or
the expression of it, but the words that it's encants.
I now acknowledge and I feel comfortable in knowing that
(21:43):
that part is it's as much me as it is
what it becomes in someone else's listening, you know. So
it's and that's the part that I feel doesn't get
refracted and like it's not like a house of mirrors
where that can't be changed by the perception of it.
Because if my privacy goes into someone else's privacy, it's
(22:06):
like a you know, it's like hermetically sealed. It's safe. Yeah,
it's kind of there is a safety to it. And
I feel as I lean deeper into myself, into the
discomfort of my like continual daily misunderstanding of myself and
just trying to align to some personal responsibility, that's kind
of a north star that is looking for different these dimensions.
(22:30):
I'm hoping to find out how to be fed by them,
because I'm increasingly depleted and I'm realizing my like psychic
organism cannot sustain often how much I'm attempting to be
and do into how many people into It's like I'm
never quite solving for X. It's just like every single day,
I'm like, I can't find X. I can't solve for X.
(22:53):
And yet then these songs weirdly are a place where
I think I can because I can pause time and
I can give myself just like a little a little
navigation somehow.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Is there anything on the album that you feel like
you did solve, like any feelings that you either came
to terms with or you were able to articulate.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
There was sort of like a secondary you know, because
I somehow wrote these songs through like this this really
difficult time, and I think I managed in that time
to kind of make myself evoke or lean into also
the responsibility to find the joy or to you know,
(23:37):
like be a little bit of a solar panel and
face the light and be energized by these things that
I'm learning or the relationships that you know, just help
me keep the horizon insight and not get completely lost,
you know. Yeah, And so weirdly, you know, you'd think
songs are you're saying something out loud as if you
know something, And so I the record was kind of
(24:01):
you know, no longer just in my within my reach,
like I'm still changing it, I'm still mixing it. I'm
still working on it. And now it's like at once,
you know, from one day to the next. Now it's
it's out, or at least it's out of my it's sealed.
It's done. It's like with a wax seal is like boop.
And there was sort of the secondary wave of a
discomfort and a kind of grief because I'm like, oh
(24:22):
my god, like I don't feel any better. It's like
maybe I could have well, I mean not to say
I mean every day I feel a range of reality,
but maybe even I thought that these songs could solve
something for me, or they could make something a little
easier or something. But the problems remain very much alive,
(24:47):
you know, the kind of shape shifting required, like the
woman who became a mother wasn't useful as a mother,
and now I need to become someone else to be
able to be that mother. It's also the daughter who
lost your father, Like these things are the adultification is ongoing,
and so to answer your question, maybe I think I
(25:09):
caught a kind of hope, you know, like it's there
is some optimism. I learned years ago that whatever I sing,
and in the repetition of it, I can find myself
making it true and truer, like whatever you look at
becomes you see it. And so if I'm looking to
(25:29):
see more hope or more optimism or more like I'm
trying to like collect the little crumbs of clarity put
my puzzle together, that maybe is what I think I
found Indie songs. And even as I say all this,
I feel a bit absurd because this is that self
mythologizing I was talking about. But it's important to me,
(25:50):
I'd say, it's more important to me than anyone else,
because this is what I This is the form I
use to try to unpack and understand what's what's going
on in there?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Right, And just speaking of having the feeling that nothing
has changed after accomplishing something, have you had the experience of, like,
as you've gotten more successful or as you've experienced success
over the course of your career, did you ever have
the thought that when you reached a certain place of
(26:22):
success or fame or whatever it is, that some of
those problems would go away.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
I don't think that I ever had a fixed destination
in mind or edward or was it within, you know,
maybe the illusion that I could make anything easier. But
I will say that something, something that led to some
of this cracking open was precipitated by going to that
people festival. I don't know if you've heard about it,
but it was a festival in Berlin that was curated
(26:51):
or the context of it, which was created by Justin
Vernon and the Desert Brothers of the National Aaron and Brice,
and they created a festival and invited me to it,
and they kind of tried. I think they invited me
a few years and I didn't quite have the ears
to hear what they were saying until I was ready
to hear what they were saying, which is, we really
(27:12):
want to create a situation where people step outside of
their own expectations of themselves and find something new. What
they do is they invite, like in this one in Berlin,
there was like a three hundred people, and in each
case it was someone they kind of knew concentric circle,
like you know, a few radiations out from them, or
old friends like we're old friends, and Justin and I
(27:33):
are old friends. And they take people out of their
comfort zone in sense like not not you and your
drummer and your bass player and your tour manager and
you're you're in your monitors person or or something. It's
just you or the bass player from that band, or
the drummer from that band, or the guy who wrote
the libretto for that opera, that poet or that choreographer,
(27:54):
or that the trumpet player musical director for Paul Simon's band,
that you know, just all these individuals who possibly have
knit themselves very closely with the people that they've been
in collaboration with for many, many years, and as I
had done with my immediate family. And then they just
put us all in a hotel in Berlin with food
(28:16):
and drinks, kind of like we were joking, it's like
being at a really nice wedding. And then they took
over this campus called the Funk House, which is an
old radio kind of a Soviet era giant radio station
with many studios in it, and we would go between
the campus and the hotel and the ideas everyone's supposed
(28:40):
to for five days cultivate kind of like I don't
have an idea, do you what should we do? But
tickets have already been sold for Saturday Sunday to thousands
of people coming who don't know who's there. They didn't
buy the tickets knowing who's going to be at the festival.
They just know that this people festival invites people and
then something will occur as a result. And it was
(29:03):
just the most remarkable thing. It was just I reconnected
with the kings of convenience there, who I hadn't played
with for years. I created an improvisation project with Todd
Dhlhoff and Shazzad Is Maley based upon Emily Wilson's translation
of the Odyssey. I mean just literally because I had
it at dinner one night, the book that I was reading,
and Shaza said, what's that? And I was like, you
(29:24):
wouldn't believe this book. You just flip it open in
any phrase from this ancient Greek. This woman made it
read so readable, so relatable and anything could be sung.
And He's like, hey, well then let's do that. Let's
ask Mary, the creative director, Mary Hickson, to give us
space and give us an hour. And that's what she did.
(29:44):
She would she would have kind of in this enormous
spreadsheet the size of a room. She was moving people's
names around through the rooms available and helping people find
ways to incubate new projects. And then programmed this entire
festival on the fly so that when the audience came,
they all each member, each person who came. I think
(30:05):
they divided these thousands of people up into ten groups.
They all got wriskbands it said number one, number two,
number three, and there was a different itinerary for each
group of people, so they would be brought from room
to room to room in twenty minute to forty minute
increments and see these projects that were just being born
on the fly.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And that is so cool.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
It was so cool. And I guess what I'm saying
is that that was to answer your question with the
longest answer of all time through history, is is it
was a kind of a I called it like a
mid career detox or something, because it was it was
a way to strip myself of all of the rules
that I'd come up with that they were like collated
(30:45):
over invisibly over time. Like Okay, I don't I shouldn't
do that anymore because that didn't work. Okay, So now
I have rule number one. Now, I shouldn't play multiple
shows in the same city because it seems that by
the third show it's change and it doesn't feel right,
So okay, multiples or like, technically I should use my
pedal chain this way because that's the way that seems
to work best. I should use my And I had
(31:07):
kind of collected this armature of all of these things
that I knew in air quotes because I what it
was was I was just limiting myself. I created all
these conditions that kind of disempowered me at the core
where I thought that I could only be what I
am and do what I do if these conditions were
in place. And so slowly, slowly, slowly, I lost my
(31:30):
scissor kicking punk clarity, a vision, and I became like
a professional who in the in that transition kind of
lost access to like the primary energetic truth surge that
it makes sound out of my body, you know, and
that people festival. Really it just gave me this feeling
(31:51):
of being like at Summer Camp, like you know every
single person there, and these are people who have achieved tenure,
Like we've all been touring for twenty years, and everyone's
walking into the cafeteria equivalent and be like, I don't
know anyone.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Here, like who must be so humbling?
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Yeah? Can I sit with you guys like that kind
of thing, and everyone is feeling that, and yeah, it
was a really remarkable experience. It really changed everything for me.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
We're taking one last quick break and then coming back
with more from Leo Rose and Feist. We're back with
the rest of Leo Rose's interview with Feist.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
There's a certain threshold that all of us have for
letting something new in. When you're listening to new music
or a new artist or a new genre or whatever
it is. Does that happen for you with your own music?
Speaker 4 (32:45):
How so?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Like do you have to hear something maybe like ten times,
or sing something a bunch of times, or hear even
if it's just a track, hear it a bunch of
times before it sticks.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
You Know, It's funny because I I just listened last
night on a long nighttime drive to pod I Love
on Being. I'm sure you say, yeah, well, she's she's
wonderful and she's so great. Yeah, I'm sure it's doing
what you do. You must feel like you identify with
(33:17):
her or something that it's to conduct an interview, you know, which,
by the way, you're doing really beautifully, so thank you.
But but she interviewed Rick Rubin. I don't know if
you heard that one, that is, I did it. It's
like it's recent and it's not often that she interviews
anybody from anywhere close to I mean, not that i'd
say I'm close to anywhere close to what Rick Rubin's accomplished,
(33:38):
but in the sense that I don't really hear her
speaking to people who make art. It's more people whose
life as they live it is in a way art
or writers or you know, theologians, or I mean, just
people from all walks of life, but not often like
a record producer or a musician, you know, because we're
kind of like the low art on the art spectrum
(34:00):
or something. You know. Yeah, but he really he said
something that I really liked, which was she was admitting
that though she speaks with writers all the time and
she's trying to cultivate her own practice of writing and
make space for that, and that it's that when she
sits in front of the page, she's kind of just
tortured and having such a difficult time. And I found
(34:22):
that so touching, because that's I don't know that anyone
gets to bypass that part of it, the self loath,
the self loathing, the you know, imposture syndrome sort of thing.
But he said, well, it's because if you're the writer
and the reader in the same instant, there's a cognitive
dissonance between the doing and the absorbing. So you've you've
(34:45):
squeezed it out of you and you're now you're immediately
absorbing it, and you're gonna you're going to taint the
reading with the writing of it because you're going to
be the writer reading it. And that's that those are
two different roles. And so here he gave great advice,
which was to just create a buffer and a separation
between those two halves of yourself and right right, right right,
(35:06):
as if it's a muscle you're exercising, and don't read anything,
and then maybe way later, when you're absolutely certain you
have no idea what's in that book, open it again,
and then you can be the reader and then you
can judge truly. So in writing, you know, in writing
these songs, what he said, I recognize it as something
(35:27):
I do. My mind is maybe not interested or patient
enough to really like, no melody can survive my scrutiny. Basically,
if I work on something too much on Tuesday, it's
sort of like dead to me by Wednesday, and I
don't care about it anymore because I feel like the
muse didn't play ball or something. Yeah, so the Song
a Day thing, you know, I don't think. I don't
(35:49):
think we spoke about that, But did we?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
No, I want to ask you about that. I've heard
Maggie Rodgers talk about that about the group. Is that
what you're talking about? The writing group sort of like workshopping, Yeah,
songs and there was an assignment.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
That's right. Yes, The Song a Day group is led
by our intrepid captain phil Winrobe, who's a producer out
of New York, and he created this game, I think
with Damien Rice. I think it was Damien and him
that first thought of it. So in that Rick Ruben
advice way of be the maker and then later be
(36:23):
the listener. I the Song A Day was this repetition
of like you have to qualify kind of in a
good natured way to stay in to not get booted,
because the consequence of not showing up on Monday is
like Okay, well then you're out, you know. Good. We
all love you, we all raise a toast to you,
but you're out, you know. But it's like all warm
(36:46):
and good nature. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
But it's good though, because it sounds like with the
People festival. Yeah, And that was sort of an assignment.
The Song a Day is sort of an assignment.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Yes, And because of the need to keep going, there
would be kind of at the end of the seven days,
I would maybe be aware that I caught a little
a few messages in a bottle, like something just came
clearly through, arrived intact. I managed to like lob it
out into the Song a Day community and then and
then I would kind of know that if I listen
(37:18):
back to these right now, I'm going to I'm going
to make them worse, I'm going to pick them apart, whatever.
But if I just wait a few months, like let
the compost start to regenerate the soil like this, let
it sit. It was really amazing because I did four
or five of these, and the group changed each time.
There was kind of like a few of us that
did everyone, and by the end there was you know,
(37:40):
twenty something songs from which this record was essentially born.
But I gave myself the distance between the doing and
the beginning to I don't know understand what amount of
reformulation any of them needed. I waited there was a
window between the doing and the and the kind of
working on them.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Are you working on any new music?
Speaker 4 (38:01):
No, but I've had that kind of inclination, you know,
like a craving almost. It's it's sort of you know,
it's sort of like you never know that you're in
an epoch until you're out of it. Like I didn't
know in my twenties that moment was like actually a thing,
like it was a time I will be able to remember.
I never you never know when you're in the the
(38:25):
like moment of writing. It's kind of like until you notice,
Oh I haven't haven't felt that craving, haven't been in
that mind frame. I haven't like been receptive to that
for a while, you know. But honestly, finishing a record
is so obliteratingly like it's such a task that there
wasn't a lot of room. But maybe because it's done now,
I'm already starting to feel that craving. Yeah, so I
(38:48):
did ask Phil for another song a day because now
I feel I like being inside that it's a phantom community.
There's yeah, you know, one time in the pandemic, Adam
had every buddy to his yard for a very distant
you know, everyone had a picnic blanket like thirty feet
from each other and it was Amelia Meath from Silvaneso
(39:10):
and Beck and Maggie was there that time, and Adam
Cohen and you know, it's just like a mac DeMarco.
He did that one and it was the first time
we'd all you know, been together to say, is that
was pretty That's pretty cool that we get to do
that together but alone, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
So are people like sitting on their blanket and singing
their song?
Speaker 4 (39:30):
No, not at all. We were just hanging like it
was song a day had happened. And it's such a
commitment and it's such a you know, our whole week
is pointed at this like very private exercise that we
know other people are having the same private exercise. You know,
maybe like cramming for an exam like everyone in your class.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
That's what I just thought of too.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Yeah, it's like no one can get that information into
your brain but you but you know everyone's also doing it.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
You know right, so it feels a little better in solidarity.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
But I request another one and for my birthday this year.
Hilariously because on Valentine's Day, which is the day after
my birthday, the first songs came out, and then I
wrote Phil and said, hey, ps, these songs, for the
most part on this record came from what the opportunity
you gave me to like find them, so you're kind
of the godfather of this record. And he's like, okay,
well then happy birthday. Let's do another week and it
(40:21):
can be any week you want. So I picked the
week when I know I'm not on tour, when I
know I can get quiet, and we're going to do
another one in June, so that's that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah,
we've already started to like send out the invice, justin
Vernon wanted to do it, trying to think of some
other friends who have expressed interest and said, like, tell
me next time it's happening, and yeah, to get out
(40:42):
of our own way at this point and have Phil
and Damien create that context, it's such a gift totally.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Do you need to hear feedback from people when you
play something new, No.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
I usually feel I'm better served to keep it real
tight until I'm until I'm pretty sure about where I'm
going with it. The development of those initial little embryos
that were found in Song a Day, it happened like
in an isolation beyond even usually I kind of self
isolate through the writing process, but I would show MACKI
(41:15):
or Gonzo. I would show certain friends, my really dear
friend in Toronto named Adriann, like she's just sort of
always been a witness. I kind of like she's always
like I believe you or I don't know if I
believe you. In this case, the closest collaborator I would
say through the writing process besides Song a Day was
I became pen pals with the director Mike Mills through
(41:37):
the pandemic and we were just sort of like this
epistolary ping pong game that was all about craft and
it was all about He was in the middle of
editing his new film Kaman Common that's since come out,
and I was in you know, kind of isolation Song
a Day, and like, it's really strange, but this friendship
(41:58):
bloomed right at the beginning of the pandemic and it
became kind of this like I don't know what accountability
centrifugue or something. Because there was someone curious listening, he
for whatever reason, got he received energy from other people's problems,
like he from solving kind of a problem other than
his edit. It seemed to always he'd bring something back
(42:20):
with him from coming into my into my little laboratory,
and then he'd leave and go back to what he
was working on. And similarly he'd send me screen grabs
or little bits of dialogue or something, and you know,
it was sort of we were activated by each other's
different form. Like I don't know, I don't know anything
about film, and he can. He considered music to be
(42:41):
like this playground that was not responsible to like a
two hour arc and character development and all of this
arduousness that comes with filmmaking. Yeah, he gave me a
lot of really cool homework too.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I'd very cool.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
I'd send him an early song and you know he
would or like a song a day the day I
wrote it. I'd say I'd lob it over to him
and say like, this was my offering today, I feel
particularly good about it. And then he'd he'd have like
he was the only person I felt interested in crosstalk
from or in like input from.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
What would he say, like what sort of feedback would
he give you?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
He'd often say, can you put that in plain language,
like write your lyrics out and then underneath verse five,
verse line by line, or just like kind of summarize
each verse and what you're trying to what you're what
are you saying with that? Like what do you what
is the concrete thing you're you're getting at, because you
part of my thing is I like speaking around a thing.
(43:35):
I like creating the the image of what's inside in
relief kind of. And it's sort of like in the
in like casting ceramics or something. You make a mold
and then you pour something inside it, and when you
crack the mold off, there's the shape, like in a
way lyrically I like doing I like finding a shape
(43:56):
in relief, you know. So he would say, Okay, I
get that you're you're you're creating a shape and relief,
but now just describe to me what that shape is
and then go back and see if you can put
a little bit more of the clarity of what that
shape is inside. You know, this is a man who's very,
very good at narrative. You know. It was just so
helpful because I think I was also just trying to
(44:18):
find a way to be a little bit closer to
the quick. And I'd say that that influence from Mike
really found I found him in my mind's eye kind
of you know, he's a little angel on my shoulder
or saying that, Is there another way to say that,
you know?
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask you if there's
somebody in your mind while you're writing, but it sounds
like he was the little angel. He made that wonderful
movie with the film that he made for the National Yes,
and I think he got them unstuck as well.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
Yes, exactly. And that's how we met, ironically because Aaron
and brace After people now we've all joined the same
cult essentially because of that what that Festial did for me.
And they asked if I would come and do the
Q and A for a screening for that film in Toronto.
So that's how I met Mike goes through that film,
which I found incredibly.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Powerful, so powerful, and I.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
Hate to say it, but at this point I think
I'm incredibly late and I have to go on a
motherly errand to pick someone up if you know what
I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Yes, yes, yes yes. Thank you so much for taking
the time to talk today. It was so much fun.
I'm loving your album.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
Thank you. This has been such an interesting conversation and
it was really really nice to talk to you. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Thanks for talking through the inspiration for a new album, multitudes.
You can hear all of our favorite fight songs on
a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. You can
follow us on Twitter at broken record. Broken Record is
produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Fantaliday, and
Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie. Broken Record is a
(46:01):
production of Pushkin Industries, and if you like the show,
please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
podcast app. I fee Music, Expect Kenny Beats, I'm justin
Mischan
Hi, I'm Nora Jones and today I'm playing along with
Broken Record Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm just playing lone we say.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, I'm Norah Jones, and today we're doing something a
little different. We're sharing a fantastic episode from another podcast
that we love. It's called Broken Record. On Broken Record,
acclaimed producer Rick Rubin, best selling author Malcolm Gladwell, and
others interview storied musicians from every genre about their lives,
(00:31):
inspiration and music. I was a guest of Broken Record
back in November of twenty nineteen in the early days
of the podcast. I got to talk to Malcolm Gladwell
and Bruce Headlam. Be sure to check that out if
you get a chance. Today, we're sharing a recent interview
with Feist. She is one of my favorites. I love
her so much, and this episode of the Broken Record
(00:54):
podcast is so good because she goes really deep about
her music and her life, and I think it's the
most I've ever heard her talk about her music. In April,
Feist released her sixth album, Multitudes and It's Beautiful. It's
an album she wrote in the wake of losing her
father and after becoming a first time mother. Just months
(01:15):
before the pandemic began. Today we'll hear Broken Record podcast
producer Leah Rose talk to Feis about the new album
and how she was inspired to make new music after
performing at an experimental music festival in Berlin. She also
talks about things in her life that happened and explains
how she found solace in writing new songs amidst the
exhaustion of early motherhood. So here's the episode. I really
(01:38):
hope you enjoy it as much as I did. You
can listen to more episodes of Broken Record from Pushkin
Industries wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Pushkin. Canadian born singer songwriter five has been one of
the most dynamic indie voices of the last two decades.
She scored international fame early in her career, thanks in
part to a nano iPod commercial featuring the song one, two,
three four, But for fans of Feist, her appeal lies
(02:15):
in how she mines her complex emotional life. Just last month,
Feist released her sixth album, Multitudes. She recorded it in
the aftermath of tremendous personal loss and change. In late
twenty nineteen. Feist adopted a baby just months before the
pandemic started. About a year later, her father died suddenly.
(02:37):
Multitudes is a raw and intimate look at how she
grappled with deep seated grief and a new kind of love.
On today's episode, Lea Rose talks with Feist about how
being assaulted in high school ultimately led to her gaining resilience.
Feist also remembers the day her music career began when
she was asked to front a hardcore band, and how
(02:59):
screaming on age and ultimately blowing out her voice forced
her to develop her intimate, career defining singing style. This
is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm
justin Ritchman. Here's Lea Rose with Feist.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I have read the PR blurb about the new album,
but I would love to hear in your words, just
talk about how the project started to come together.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yes, well, everything was pretty topsy turvy, there wasn't it.
I mean, there was a complete reframe. There was no
presumption of the way things used to be is the
way they're going to be. And interestingly, the outside world
was sort of echoing what was going on for me
in my inside world, which was that nothing was to
(03:49):
be presumed, nothing that had been was going to be
because I had just become a mother right four months
before the pandemic started, so it was sort of a
double down of complete reassessment. And you know, a friend
of mine said something that has become unfortunately so true.
I mean, fortunately unfortunately that to become a parent is
(04:11):
to be incinerated and so true. But who rises from
the ashes is a more interesting person to be for
the rest of your life. And I'm still working on that.
I'm trying to figure out if if this is more interesting, but.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I know it's like I just feel like a like
depleted version but hopefully eventually more interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Well, the way I've been looking at it is the
person who decided to the person who felt capable of
being a mother to decided to become a mother, she
was actually not very useful and not very helpful at
being a mother. So you know, that was then echoed
by the whole world kind of being uncomfortable with their
(04:54):
former selves that didn't serve them anymore in this new context.
And every I felt like everywhere I looked, any and
close to me, let alone, kind of collectively, there was
just this crucible that was just incinerating every presumption that
came from a previous time, you know, And so songs
kind of they became what there they always have been
(05:14):
to me, but like they certainly were even more so
a kind of a habit that I returned to that
brought me comfort or like a it might be in
that incineration, some last living arm lunged out of the
quicksand like ah and grabbed it a little filament of
a former self or something, because I found it really
(05:35):
helped me to use some of those wee hours and
those sort of that liminal state of pure exhaustion and
to open myself to that and and a lot of
new things and new parts of me were very slowly
given a little a place to you know, work out
(05:57):
what that was going to look like in in the
form of songs. So it was, you know, kind of
like a like some people return to hiking, or they
get they go swimming, clear their head, they you know,
whatever they've done their whole life to return to a
kind of a privacy that is going to maybe help
them like untangle something. In my very fortunate case, I've
(06:20):
always found that in writing a song over the years,
like I can almost every one of my songs has
in some way been my attempt to understand some unknowable moments.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Are there any songs on the new album that directly
relate to being a new parent that helped you articulate
something that you couldn't quite grasp before.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Well, I would say the only song that you know
she will know was about her is the song Forever Before,
which I think might be the second song I think.
And it came from this idea that to commit so intentionally,
to walk so directly right towards the precipice of complete vulnerability,
(07:05):
is to become a mother. And I had never begun
a Forever Before. I mean, that was sort of there
was no sidling out of that commitment. It was a
true commitment. And you know, as much as I feel
that I have been committed to things in my life
before I've shown all the way up to different things
and different relationships and different ways of thinking or ways
(07:28):
of being, the ways of relating, I had never done
something that could not be undone or that I hope
will never be undone. It is. It's the first, one
hundred percent, just like dive dive in, you know, And
so that song kind of helped in a way. It
chronologically over the three verses. It's sort of it's like
(07:49):
a little parenthesis around maybe the years leading up to
understanding the basis of my life and how it was
no longer enough or something, and how that I wanted
to expand and make myself prone to the unknown.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
On your song Borrow Trouble, there's some lyrics that talk
about picturing a life that you are left out of
and how that is maybe different than what you imagined,
And it seems to me like you're now trying to
appreciate a life that you've created for yourself.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Yeah, I would say I found the idea years ago
that like, if I can't make it better, if it's
out of with it not within my power to make
it better, it being what, you know, whatever, I'm in
the midst of chying to face or solve like psychicalge
break equation of like solve for X. It's like the
X is ever changing and it is ever present, and
(08:49):
it's just going to shape shift and always be something
to need to solve. And if I can't make it better,
at least I can learn how to not make it worse.
And to not make it worse means you not spin
my wheels in and concretized thinking or learning actually what
the mechanics of passive aggressivity is and what it is
(09:11):
to And that's another thing about to commit to the
words that come out of your mouth. It's sort of
bootcamp for committing to the steps you take towards in
which directions and all of that, I guess is it's
sort of been the quiet background of all the work
I've done in my life and my mind. And as
art imitates life, songs the songs these songs in particular
(09:34):
have taken the form of like a roadmap or as
we all self mythologize, you know in our you don't
and as friends who work very different they have different
jobs than me, friends who don't get a response from
the world about what their work is. They say, hey,
don't kid yourself. I have the exact same self mythologizing.
(09:57):
I invest in the lore of my life. What is
you know, the background of my childhood and what it
did to me and how it created the expectations that
I then had to fight to. You know, It's just
that in my case, I work it out in this
way that can then be like a silly, petty puzzle
piece that someone people can take it and then reform
(10:18):
it to fit the puzzle that they're trying to solve.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
You know, yeah, I'm curious, like, what were you like
in high school? What were you into?
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Like?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
What kind of kid were you in high school?
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Well? I suppose I was probably kind of shy, but
I also had started to go to all the punk
shows in my town, and I had assumed the exterior
of looking other than what I was on the inside.
And I was sort of you know, I had piercings
and shaved my head and it was manic panic and
(10:52):
I was. And I went to a pretty conservative high school.
And maybe in the first couple of maybe the first
month or two or something of my first year of
high school, I was attacked by a group of guys,
not like I mean, here I am making excuses for them,
like not violently, but come on, Like I was lifted
up and slammed into a wall and handcuffed to a door.
(11:14):
And then I've actually never told this story except to friends,
but at this point I kind of understand how this was.
All The adversity I was against was like ultimately helpful
but very difficult. But the whole student body, you know,
no one came to my aid. They created kind of
like a giant school size semi circle around me, and
(11:37):
you know, laughed and jeered and snickered, and then we're
shooed into the cafeteria. And then the vice principal, I guess,
after like half an hour or something, I got un
handcuffed and was completely in shock. And then he he
was like, who did this? And I said, I don't know.
They came up from behind me, and he said, that's
(11:59):
why we don't want kids like you here. And then
he made me walk through the entire cafeteria in front
of him, while he walked behind me through a dead
silent cafeteria so that I would tell him who had
done this, and up and down the rows of the
different seats while the only sound in the cafeteria was
my own crying because I was, you know, choking in
(12:20):
my like, and I was being marched up and down
these aisles. And then you know, in the silence, someone
screamed freak and then the and then twelve hundred people laughed,
and I'd say that was the basis of my high school.
And I started skipping, and I started going to like
more and more shows and not really knowing where to
go and what to be and what to do. And
(12:42):
luckily these girls came up to me in the hallway
and they were like, hey, you go to all those shows, right,
but aren't you in the choir because I had found
the choir at that school. And I was like, yeah,
I'm in the choir and I go to all the shows.
And they're like, well, we need a singer for our band.
Do you wanna do you want to join in our band?
And I was like, without that, I have no idea
(13:04):
where I would have ended up. And then I transferred
myself to an alternative school and I didn't tell my mom,
didn't even know, you know, it was like maybe many
months in the school contacted her and said, Leslie's expelled.
She hasn't shown up, and my mom was like, assumed
I was just completely and I was like, no, no, no,
I just didn't tell you because I knew you would
probably make it even harder for me to just pull
(13:26):
this off. So I just did it. And I was
at this alternative school and I was in this band
and like, you know, kind of turned that frown upside
down sort of thing through the support of like genuine
community did.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
You tell your parents about the incident with the being handcuffed.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Yes, my mom, I didn't live with my dad was
across the country, but yeah, I told my mom. And
I think that, you know, she had just watched her
daughter change so radically that she might have just been
so frustrated that like she you know, let's just say
that it's in recent years, I've recontextualized, hey ps. Nowadays,
(14:05):
luckily there's language to meet this type of moment that
at the time there was no language for. And I
can say that I'm grateful that now, like you know,
the gradations of experience that any single word can carry
within it is now at least available to be evoked
when it needs to be because that principle, you know,
(14:28):
like I can still get angry. I can still think
I need to find out who that was. I need
to write an open letter to that school letting them
know how. You know, they might be like, ooh, will
you come speak at our graduation. It's like, well, I
might have something to say that you don't necessarily want
to hear, but it was a different time, and not
to excuse it, but I can say that, like it
(14:49):
just we all know it to be true, it was
a different time. There was no vocabulary around this, and
without that, I don't know where I would be. And
so it's like anything that that helps you grow or
causes you to have to unavoidably find some interior basis
for understanding, and you can cave into bitterness or you
(15:11):
can you know, and I'm sure I had many years
of caving into bitterness, but something else rose from it
that I'm grateful for.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
When did you start writing songs?
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Well, in that band, I suppose was the beginning of songwriting,
even though we were doing it together. It was baby
steps in lyrics and you know who's the narrator? Is
this first person? Is this dream sequence? Is this stream
of consciousness? Or just you know, melody? But it was
a hardcore band, so ultimately our main asset was volume
(15:46):
and yeah, and melody came a lot later. I mean
there was melody I suppose at that time, but it
was mostly I didn't play guitar. I just was the
front person and I and volume was you know, kind
of where what I leaned on. And yeah, so many
years later, after I blew my voice out on tour
(16:06):
with that band, like just from screaming, I ended up
kind of under doctor's orders to you know, stay silent.
I had nodes. I had the whole that period of regenerating,
and I learned. I kind of taught myself to begin
to play guitar at that time when I when I
was in this sort of imposed silence and I'd had
to quit the band. I'd moved to Toronto. I you know,
(16:29):
I was living in my dad's basement and just like
kind of dealing with my first dose of isolation. And
what I found there was you know, melody essentially.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Do you remember some of the first songs you wrote
once you started playing guitar.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Yeah. I also had this thing called a melodica, which
is kind of like a wooden boxed miniature xylophone that
I was really and also had a four track. My
dad had given me a cassette four track a task
am and I had started with layers and singing harmonies
and making these long overtones with the metallophone, and I
(17:05):
kind of maybe something like sound sculptures using the radio,
using interference and just kind of playing with the form,
and like maybe the first songs they wrote the kind
of clunky first you know, broad strokes attempts were you know,
it's like now I listen to them and it's like
the touching yearbook photo kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Where do you identify with any of the lyrics?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Still, maybe there was a there was a kind of
a sensibility and interest in metaphor already. Was there a
kind of wordplay? You know? I can hear now the
kind of grandfathered in sort of tendencies to like how
to speak around a subject rather than directly to it. Yeah,
(17:50):
I guess I wouldn't like sit and like probably cover
any of I would say, n see, I'm even calling
it covering, like as if it's not my own.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
That's so interesting a former self, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Yeah, I probably wouldn't cover her songs, but I can
appreciate that there's some DNA there.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
We're going to take a quick break and then come
back with more from Leo Rose and Feist. We're back
with Leo Rose and Feist.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
What do you think that you do as a songwriter
as a performer? What do you think you do especially
well or what are you the best at?
Speaker 4 (18:34):
That's a nice question. I don't know that I can
really characterize it in words. There's like a location in
me that is interested in all sorts of variables and
how they cross over, and maybe I on this record
in particular, I was interested in kind of unseating some
of my tendencies and seeing what might be behind them. And there's,
(18:59):
maybe for the first time in my life, an awareness
that there's a kind of a rigor and a craft
and an interest in craft that I wouldn't have known
with my frontal lobe previously, I wouldn't have really thought
that's what I'm doing. But I'm kind of I continue
to learn from what came before, Like everything I've done
previously is sort of composted into the new body of work,
(19:22):
and I've can I can say to people I'm working with,
like this feels a little bit like mush of Boom's
great granddaughter or something like there's some there's some DNA,
there's something in here that is or like if Century
and Sea Lion had had a love child, that might be,
you know, a bort of Trouble or something like that.
(19:45):
Or but yeah, so there's a lineage maybe in what
I've made so far that that makes me curious about
what will come next or how that perspective will continue
to be interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Do you feel like the character that you've created, or
do you feel like there even is a character that
you've created through your work? And if so, is that
person you or is it similar to you? Or does
that make sense?
Speaker 4 (20:19):
It does? It does? It makes more sense now than ever.
I feel like an alignment has occurred where I now
know I owe nothing to the avatar, you know, the
thing that is refracted by this particular light that's shined
on this thing I do society that our society shines
(20:40):
this particular timbre of light is quality of light on
what I do, and it refracts out beyond me and
in some cases maybe leans a little bit too much
importance on it in a way that is on the surface.
I've learned that my investment in this very private conversation
with myself, yeah, and my voice being like literally and
(21:01):
then part of my anatomy that over many years I
learned to listen to from the inside rather than from
the outside. And and so it's kind of like I've
never thought about this before, but imagine like a you know,
like how a door knob reaches through a door, and
on one side you can turn it to go in,
and on the other side you can turn it to
(21:21):
go out, And those are two different gestures, but there
is the same portal. It's the same desire to move through.
And so my voice or the way I've chosen to
try to formulate not this not only the sound or
the expression of it, but the words that it's encants.
I now acknowledge and I feel comfortable in knowing that
(21:43):
that part is it's as much me as it is
what it becomes in someone else's listening, you know. So
it's and that's the part that I feel doesn't get
refracted and like it's not like a house of mirrors
where that can't be changed by the perception of it.
Because if my privacy goes into someone else's privacy, it's
(22:06):
like a you know, it's like hermetically sealed. It's safe. Yeah,
it's kind of there is a safety to it. And
I feel as I lean deeper into myself, into the
discomfort of my like continual daily misunderstanding of myself and
just trying to align to some personal responsibility, that's kind
of a north star that is looking for different these dimensions.
(22:30):
I'm hoping to find out how to be fed by them,
because I'm increasingly depleted and I'm realizing my like psychic
organism cannot sustain often how much I'm attempting to be
and do into how many people into It's like I'm
never quite solving for X. It's just like every single day,
I'm like, I can't find X. I can't solve for X.
(22:53):
And yet then these songs weirdly are a place where
I think I can because I can pause time and
I can give myself just like a little a little
navigation somehow.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Is there anything on the album that you feel like
you did solve, like any feelings that you either came
to terms with or you were able to articulate.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
There was sort of like a secondary you know, because
I somehow wrote these songs through like this this really
difficult time, and I think I managed in that time
to kind of make myself evoke or lean into also
the responsibility to find the joy or to you know,
(23:37):
like be a little bit of a solar panel and
face the light and be energized by these things that
I'm learning or the relationships that you know, just help
me keep the horizon insight and not get completely lost,
you know. Yeah, And so weirdly, you know, you'd think
songs are you're saying something out loud as if you
know something, And so I the record was kind of
(24:01):
you know, no longer just in my within my reach,
like I'm still changing it, I'm still mixing it. I'm
still working on it. And now it's like at once,
you know, from one day to the next. Now it's
it's out, or at least it's out of my it's sealed.
It's done. It's like with a wax seal is like boop.
And there was sort of the secondary wave of a
discomfort and a kind of grief because I'm like, oh
(24:22):
my god, like I don't feel any better. It's like
maybe I could have well, I mean not to say
I mean every day I feel a range of reality,
but maybe even I thought that these songs could solve
something for me, or they could make something a little
easier or something. But the problems remain very much alive,
(24:47):
you know, the kind of shape shifting required, like the
woman who became a mother wasn't useful as a mother,
and now I need to become someone else to be
able to be that mother. It's also the daughter who
lost your father, Like these things are the adultification is ongoing,
and so to answer your question, maybe I think I
(25:09):
caught a kind of hope, you know, like it's there
is some optimism. I learned years ago that whatever I sing,
and in the repetition of it, I can find myself
making it true and truer, like whatever you look at
becomes you see it. And so if I'm looking to
(25:29):
see more hope or more optimism or more like I'm
trying to like collect the little crumbs of clarity put
my puzzle together, that maybe is what I think I
found Indie songs. And even as I say all this,
I feel a bit absurd because this is that self
mythologizing I was talking about. But it's important to me,
(25:50):
I'd say, it's more important to me than anyone else,
because this is what I This is the form I
use to try to unpack and understand what's what's going
on in there?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Right, And just speaking of having the feeling that nothing
has changed after accomplishing something, have you had the experience of, like,
as you've gotten more successful or as you've experienced success
over the course of your career, did you ever have
the thought that when you reached a certain place of
(26:22):
success or fame or whatever it is, that some of
those problems would go away.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
I don't think that I ever had a fixed destination
in mind or edward or was it within, you know,
maybe the illusion that I could make anything easier. But
I will say that something, something that led to some
of this cracking open was precipitated by going to that
people festival. I don't know if you've heard about it,
but it was a festival in Berlin that was curated
(26:51):
or the context of it, which was created by Justin
Vernon and the Desert Brothers of the National Aaron and Brice,
and they created a festival and invited me to it,
and they kind of tried. I think they invited me
a few years and I didn't quite have the ears
to hear what they were saying until I was ready
to hear what they were saying, which is, we really
(27:12):
want to create a situation where people step outside of
their own expectations of themselves and find something new. What
they do is they invite, like in this one in Berlin,
there was like a three hundred people, and in each
case it was someone they kind of knew concentric circle,
like you know, a few radiations out from them, or
old friends like we're old friends, and Justin and I
(27:33):
are old friends. And they take people out of their
comfort zone in sense like not not you and your
drummer and your bass player and your tour manager and
you're you're in your monitors person or or something. It's
just you or the bass player from that band, or
the drummer from that band, or the guy who wrote
the libretto for that opera, that poet or that choreographer,
(27:54):
or that the trumpet player musical director for Paul Simon's band,
that you know, just all these individuals who possibly have
knit themselves very closely with the people that they've been
in collaboration with for many, many years, and as I
had done with my immediate family. And then they just
put us all in a hotel in Berlin with food
(28:16):
and drinks, kind of like we were joking, it's like
being at a really nice wedding. And then they took
over this campus called the Funk House, which is an
old radio kind of a Soviet era giant radio station
with many studios in it, and we would go between
the campus and the hotel and the ideas everyone's supposed
(28:40):
to for five days cultivate kind of like I don't
have an idea, do you what should we do? But
tickets have already been sold for Saturday Sunday to thousands
of people coming who don't know who's there. They didn't
buy the tickets knowing who's going to be at the festival.
They just know that this people festival invites people and
then something will occur as a result. And it was
(29:03):
just the most remarkable thing. It was just I reconnected
with the kings of convenience there, who I hadn't played
with for years. I created an improvisation project with Todd
Dhlhoff and Shazzad Is Maley based upon Emily Wilson's translation
of the Odyssey. I mean just literally because I had
it at dinner one night, the book that I was reading,
and Shaza said, what's that? And I was like, you
(29:24):
wouldn't believe this book. You just flip it open in
any phrase from this ancient Greek. This woman made it
read so readable, so relatable and anything could be sung.
And He's like, hey, well then let's do that. Let's
ask Mary, the creative director, Mary Hickson, to give us
space and give us an hour. And that's what she did.
(29:44):
She would she would have kind of in this enormous
spreadsheet the size of a room. She was moving people's
names around through the rooms available and helping people find
ways to incubate new projects. And then programmed this entire
festival on the fly so that when the audience came,
they all each member, each person who came. I think
(30:05):
they divided these thousands of people up into ten groups.
They all got wriskbands it said number one, number two,
number three, and there was a different itinerary for each
group of people, so they would be brought from room
to room to room in twenty minute to forty minute
increments and see these projects that were just being born
on the fly.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And that is so cool.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
It was so cool. And I guess what I'm saying
is that that was to answer your question with the
longest answer of all time through history, is is it
was a kind of a I called it like a
mid career detox or something, because it was it was
a way to strip myself of all of the rules
that I'd come up with that they were like collated
(30:45):
over invisibly over time. Like Okay, I don't I shouldn't
do that anymore because that didn't work. Okay, So now
I have rule number one. Now, I shouldn't play multiple
shows in the same city because it seems that by
the third show it's change and it doesn't feel right,
So okay, multiples or like, technically I should use my
pedal chain this way because that's the way that seems
to work best. I should use my And I had
(31:07):
kind of collected this armature of all of these things
that I knew in air quotes because I what it
was was I was just limiting myself. I created all
these conditions that kind of disempowered me at the core
where I thought that I could only be what I
am and do what I do if these conditions were
in place. And so slowly, slowly, slowly, I lost my
(31:30):
scissor kicking punk clarity, a vision, and I became like
a professional who in the in that transition kind of
lost access to like the primary energetic truth surge that
it makes sound out of my body, you know, and
that people festival. Really it just gave me this feeling
(31:51):
of being like at Summer Camp, like you know every
single person there, and these are people who have achieved tenure,
Like we've all been touring for twenty years, and everyone's
walking into the cafeteria equivalent and be like, I don't
know anyone.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Here, like who must be so humbling?
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Yeah? Can I sit with you guys like that kind
of thing, and everyone is feeling that, and yeah, it
was a really remarkable experience. It really changed everything for me.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
We're taking one last quick break and then coming back
with more from Leo Rose and Feist. We're back with
the rest of Leo Rose's interview with Feist.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
There's a certain threshold that all of us have for
letting something new in. When you're listening to new music
or a new artist or a new genre or whatever
it is. Does that happen for you with your own music?
Speaker 4 (32:45):
How so?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Like do you have to hear something maybe like ten times,
or sing something a bunch of times, or hear even
if it's just a track, hear it a bunch of
times before it sticks.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
You Know, It's funny because I I just listened last
night on a long nighttime drive to pod I Love
on Being. I'm sure you say, yeah, well, she's she's
wonderful and she's so great. Yeah, I'm sure it's doing
what you do. You must feel like you identify with
(33:17):
her or something that it's to conduct an interview, you know, which,
by the way, you're doing really beautifully, so thank you.
But but she interviewed Rick Rubin. I don't know if
you heard that one, that is, I did it. It's
like it's recent and it's not often that she interviews
anybody from anywhere close to I mean, not that i'd
say I'm close to anywhere close to what Rick Rubin's accomplished,
(33:38):
but in the sense that I don't really hear her
speaking to people who make art. It's more people whose
life as they live it is in a way art
or writers or you know, theologians, or I mean, just
people from all walks of life, but not often like
a record producer or a musician, you know, because we're
kind of like the low art on the art spectrum
(34:00):
or something. You know. Yeah, but he really he said
something that I really liked, which was she was admitting
that though she speaks with writers all the time and
she's trying to cultivate her own practice of writing and
make space for that, and that it's that when she
sits in front of the page, she's kind of just
tortured and having such a difficult time. And I found
(34:22):
that so touching, because that's I don't know that anyone
gets to bypass that part of it, the self loath,
the self loathing, the you know, imposture syndrome sort of thing.
But he said, well, it's because if you're the writer
and the reader in the same instant, there's a cognitive
dissonance between the doing and the absorbing. So you've you've
(34:45):
squeezed it out of you and you're now you're immediately
absorbing it, and you're gonna you're going to taint the
reading with the writing of it because you're going to
be the writer reading it. And that's that those are
two different roles. And so here he gave great advice,
which was to just create a buffer and a separation
between those two halves of yourself and right right, right right,
(35:06):
as if it's a muscle you're exercising, and don't read anything,
and then maybe way later, when you're absolutely certain you
have no idea what's in that book, open it again,
and then you can be the reader and then you
can judge truly. So in writing, you know, in writing
these songs, what he said, I recognize it as something
(35:27):
I do. My mind is maybe not interested or patient
enough to really like, no melody can survive my scrutiny. Basically,
if I work on something too much on Tuesday, it's
sort of like dead to me by Wednesday, and I
don't care about it anymore because I feel like the
muse didn't play ball or something. Yeah, so the Song
a Day thing, you know, I don't think. I don't
(35:49):
think we spoke about that, But did we?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
No, I want to ask you about that. I've heard
Maggie Rodgers talk about that about the group. Is that
what you're talking about? The writing group sort of like workshopping, Yeah,
songs and there was an assignment.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
That's right. Yes, The Song a Day group is led
by our intrepid captain phil Winrobe, who's a producer out
of New York, and he created this game, I think
with Damien Rice. I think it was Damien and him
that first thought of it. So in that Rick Ruben
advice way of be the maker and then later be
(36:23):
the listener. I the Song A Day was this repetition
of like you have to qualify kind of in a
good natured way to stay in to not get booted,
because the consequence of not showing up on Monday is
like Okay, well then you're out, you know. Good. We
all love you, we all raise a toast to you,
but you're out, you know. But it's like all warm
(36:46):
and good nature. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
But it's good though, because it sounds like with the
People festival. Yeah, And that was sort of an assignment.
The Song a Day is sort of an assignment.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Yes, And because of the need to keep going, there
would be kind of at the end of the seven days,
I would maybe be aware that I caught a little
a few messages in a bottle, like something just came
clearly through, arrived intact. I managed to like lob it
out into the Song a Day community and then and
then I would kind of know that if I listen
(37:18):
back to these right now, I'm going to I'm going
to make them worse, I'm going to pick them apart, whatever.
But if I just wait a few months, like let
the compost start to regenerate the soil like this, let
it sit. It was really amazing because I did four
or five of these, and the group changed each time.
There was kind of like a few of us that
did everyone, and by the end there was you know,
(37:40):
twenty something songs from which this record was essentially born.
But I gave myself the distance between the doing and
the beginning to I don't know understand what amount of
reformulation any of them needed. I waited there was a
window between the doing and the and the kind of
working on them.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Are you working on any new music?
Speaker 4 (38:01):
No, but I've had that kind of inclination, you know,
like a craving almost. It's it's sort of you know,
it's sort of like you never know that you're in
an epoch until you're out of it. Like I didn't
know in my twenties that moment was like actually a thing,
like it was a time I will be able to remember.
I never you never know when you're in the the
(38:25):
like moment of writing. It's kind of like until you notice,
Oh I haven't haven't felt that craving, haven't been in
that mind frame. I haven't like been receptive to that
for a while, you know. But honestly, finishing a record
is so obliteratingly like it's such a task that there
wasn't a lot of room. But maybe because it's done now,
I'm already starting to feel that craving. Yeah, so I
(38:48):
did ask Phil for another song a day because now
I feel I like being inside that it's a phantom community.
There's yeah, you know, one time in the pandemic, Adam
had every buddy to his yard for a very distant
you know, everyone had a picnic blanket like thirty feet
from each other and it was Amelia Meath from Silvaneso
(39:10):
and Beck and Maggie was there that time, and Adam
Cohen and you know, it's just like a mac DeMarco.
He did that one and it was the first time
we'd all you know, been together to say, is that
was pretty That's pretty cool that we get to do
that together but alone, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
So are people like sitting on their blanket and singing
their song?
Speaker 4 (39:30):
No, not at all. We were just hanging like it
was song a day had happened. And it's such a
commitment and it's such a you know, our whole week
is pointed at this like very private exercise that we
know other people are having the same private exercise. You know,
maybe like cramming for an exam like everyone in your class.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
That's what I just thought of too.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Yeah, it's like no one can get that information into
your brain but you but you know everyone's also doing it.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
You know right, so it feels a little better in solidarity.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
But I request another one and for my birthday this year.
Hilariously because on Valentine's Day, which is the day after
my birthday, the first songs came out, and then I
wrote Phil and said, hey, ps, these songs, for the
most part on this record came from what the opportunity
you gave me to like find them, so you're kind
of the godfather of this record. And he's like, okay,
well then happy birthday. Let's do another week and it
(40:21):
can be any week you want. So I picked the
week when I know I'm not on tour, when I
know I can get quiet, and we're going to do
another one in June, so that's that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah,
we've already started to like send out the invice, justin
Vernon wanted to do it, trying to think of some
other friends who have expressed interest and said, like, tell
me next time it's happening, and yeah, to get out
(40:42):
of our own way at this point and have Phil
and Damien create that context, it's such a gift totally.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Do you need to hear feedback from people when you
play something new, No.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
I usually feel I'm better served to keep it real
tight until I'm until I'm pretty sure about where I'm
going with it. The development of those initial little embryos
that were found in Song a Day, it happened like
in an isolation beyond even usually I kind of self
isolate through the writing process, but I would show MACKI
(41:15):
or Gonzo. I would show certain friends, my really dear
friend in Toronto named Adriann, like she's just sort of
always been a witness. I kind of like she's always
like I believe you or I don't know if I
believe you. In this case, the closest collaborator I would
say through the writing process besides Song a Day was
I became pen pals with the director Mike Mills through
(41:37):
the pandemic and we were just sort of like this
epistolary ping pong game that was all about craft and
it was all about He was in the middle of
editing his new film Kaman Common that's since come out,
and I was in you know, kind of isolation Song
a Day, and like, it's really strange, but this friendship
(41:58):
bloomed right at the beginning of the pandemic and it
became kind of this like I don't know what accountability
centrifugue or something. Because there was someone curious listening, he
for whatever reason, got he received energy from other people's problems,
like he from solving kind of a problem other than
his edit. It seemed to always he'd bring something back
(42:20):
with him from coming into my into my little laboratory,
and then he'd leave and go back to what he
was working on. And similarly he'd send me screen grabs
or little bits of dialogue or something, and you know,
it was sort of we were activated by each other's
different form. Like I don't know, I don't know anything
about film, and he can. He considered music to be
(42:41):
like this playground that was not responsible to like a
two hour arc and character development and all of this
arduousness that comes with filmmaking. Yeah, he gave me a
lot of really cool homework too.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I'd very cool.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
I'd send him an early song and you know he
would or like a song a day the day I
wrote it. I'd say I'd lob it over to him
and say like, this was my offering today, I feel
particularly good about it. And then he'd he'd have like
he was the only person I felt interested in crosstalk
from or in like input from.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
What would he say, like what sort of feedback would
he give you?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
He'd often say, can you put that in plain language,
like write your lyrics out and then underneath verse five,
verse line by line, or just like kind of summarize
each verse and what you're trying to what you're what
are you saying with that? Like what do you what
is the concrete thing you're you're getting at, because you
part of my thing is I like speaking around a thing.
(43:35):
I like creating the the image of what's inside in
relief kind of. And it's sort of like in the
in like casting ceramics or something. You make a mold
and then you pour something inside it, and when you
crack the mold off, there's the shape, like in a
way lyrically I like doing I like finding a shape
(43:56):
in relief, you know. So he would say, Okay, I
get that you're you're you're creating a shape and relief,
but now just describe to me what that shape is
and then go back and see if you can put
a little bit more of the clarity of what that
shape is inside. You know, this is a man who's very,
very good at narrative. You know. It was just so
helpful because I think I was also just trying to
(44:18):
find a way to be a little bit closer to
the quick. And I'd say that that influence from Mike
really found I found him in my mind's eye kind
of you know, he's a little angel on my shoulder
or saying that, Is there another way to say that,
you know?
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask you if there's
somebody in your mind while you're writing, but it sounds
like he was the little angel. He made that wonderful
movie with the film that he made for the National Yes,
and I think he got them unstuck as well.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
Yes, exactly. And that's how we met, ironically because Aaron
and brace After people now we've all joined the same
cult essentially because of that what that Festial did for me.
And they asked if I would come and do the
Q and A for a screening for that film in Toronto.
So that's how I met Mike goes through that film,
which I found incredibly.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Powerful, so powerful, and I.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
Hate to say it, but at this point I think
I'm incredibly late and I have to go on a
motherly errand to pick someone up if you know what
I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Yes, yes, yes yes. Thank you so much for taking
the time to talk today. It was so much fun.
I'm loving your album.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
Thank you. This has been such an interesting conversation and
it was really really nice to talk to you. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Thanks for talking through the inspiration for a new album, multitudes.
You can hear all of our favorite fight songs on
a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. You can
follow us on Twitter at broken record. Broken Record is
produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Fantaliday, and
Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie. Broken Record is a
(46:01):
production of Pushkin Industries, and if you like the show,
please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
podcast app. I fee Music, Expect Kenny Beats, I'm justin
Mischan
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