Track Review ⊙ Daily Ops Home
Feist :: "Inside + Out (Apostle Of Hustle UnMix)"From Open Season (Arts & Crafts; 2006)
The two best pieces on Open Season are Gonzales’ “Piano Solo” version of “One Evening,” which features absolutely no Feist, and Andrew Whiteman’s collaborative “Inside + Out” BBC session with Feist that is appropriately called an “UnMix.” I say this because these two pieces focus most on Feist’s ability to write a gorgeous, striking melody, something that gets hijacked and distracted throughout her recent remix/collabo disc.
But definitely not here. Whiteman is the Apostle of Hustle. He’s a fantastic guitarist, but this is hardly apparent on Broken Social Scene’s albums because, most of the time, tweezing his guitar out of their sonic wash is impossible. Live, however, he chooses his moments and can take over a set, leaving band members stepping on their own jaws with his solos that, essentially, give fuck-you's to the sonic wash and break off into psych versions of the Soviet Republic National Anthem. If Nikolai Volkov sang it right, I mean. Point being: Whiteman’s playing can actually be witty, and he knows how and when to complement a given mood.
Combine that with Feist’s gorgeous, untraditional, voice. She’s got a subtle croak that twists around the ends of her lines to intone and tweak whatever she’s emoting into that tingly feeling you get when a love interest whispers in your ear. Combine that hard-to-describe-without-
referencing-something-physical voice with Whiteman’s tactful strums and the result sounds like fireplaces and thawing toes, especially when the jazzy cadence of the original is slow-mo’d, teased out, and Feist is pitch-perfect. London saw a mini baby-boom nine months after this aired, dinner daters take note.
Aaron Newell :: 28 August 2006 |
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