Feist - Metals

How do you follow up the critically-worshipped, 4x-Grammy nominated, 750,000-selling 2007 album The Reminder? Well, if you're Feist, you take some down time, eventually dust off your guitar (a couple of times) and then, she says, look for "someplace you've never been": geographically in Big Sur, California, and creatively. There with longtime collaborators Chilly Gonzalez and Mocky (plus newcomer Valgeir Sigurossen, of Bjork work), the Broken Social Scene-stealer recorded her new songs with big, often dark themes of solitude and mortality, detachment and fleeting relationships. While her voice retains the distinctive, warmly lit resonance and there a times of buoyant, lilting spark, rarely has Feist turned the coal-black streak of melancholy into such moody, angular and brittle atmospherics. The sometimes brutal, always stunning new album, arriving October 4, isn't called Metals for nothing.

The 35-year-old is taking stock of her life and career in these songs, turning her gaze inward. "There's a lot more chaos and movement and noise than I've had before," she says. "I allowed for mistakes more than I ever have...it was about un-simplifying things and leaning on these masterful minds I have so much respect for." In the studio she searched for what she describes now as a "modern ancient" sound, with natural keyboards, strings and richly tailored vocal harmonies but also stretching to the other side of the arc, to sharp barb-wire edges and guitar lines rubbed raw. The sparkle of the perfectly titled "Bittersweet Melodies" bumps up against the stuttering beat and doo-wop vocals of lead track "How Come You Never Go There." The sparse "Caught In the Wind" nudging the sharp elbows of the brash opener "The Bad In Each Other." The gentle whispering gait of "Anti-pioneer" suddenly sprinting with "Undiscovered First." Metals reminds us of the glorious breadth of a multi-layered album not simply as a collection of random songs but as a complete, diverse body of work. One of the finest albums of the year.

Feist - "How Come You Never Go There" (from Metals)

Photo Credit: Mark Veltman for The New York Times