Feist ready for next chapter

By Nekesa Mumbi Moody

AP Music Writer

NEW YORK

As Feist celebrated her 35th birthday earlier this year with an intimate dinner among friends, she was momentarily distracted by the intense flickering of a television in a nearby room.

The images were bizarre — motorbikes on a stage accompanied by pyrotechnics and music. Whatever it was seemed outlandish and jarring. What, she wondered, could be the spectacle?

It wasn’t until she got closer to the television that the frenetic, choreographed commotion made sense. It was the telecast of the Grammy Awards. Only three years earlier, she was part of that scene, performing “1234,” the song that would make the former indie artist a global sensation — in a different out-of-context performance.

Now, watching the awards, the images she saw confirmed how surreal that experience had been — and how she just doesn’t fit into that poppy, musical world.

“The Grammys, and the magnitude of that spotlight, it wasn’t a place where I felt at home. Like what I do doesn’t really happen there,” Feist said during a recent interview as she sat on a quiet patio at her downtown Manhattan hotel. “It’s such a potent and brief moment, and it doesn’t really speak to the truth of what touring and being a musician is. It’s mostly fanfare, inflated and very intense. I wasn’t feeling very comfortable in that kind of setting.”

Now that Feist is releasing “Metals,” the follow-up to her breakthrough, heralded 2007 album, “The Reminder,” she’s back in her comfort zone. Her fourth album has a darker tone, but still has that otherworldly, mystical quality that has made her one of music’s more original voices.

“It’s just heading into a much more personal and bold and more uncompromising direction, taking all kinds of risks, which I respect,” says her longtime collaborator Chilly Gonzales, one of the album’s producers and songwriters. He compares her new album to territory occupied by Kate Bush and PJ Harvey — ambitious, daring, but most important, a new direction from “The Reminder” era.

While the Canadian singer already had a name and critical acclaim, it wasn’t until she decided to let Apple use a clip of her video for the whimsical “1234” for an iPod Nano commercial that the mainstream public became fascinated with Feist. The clip, which featured dancers in brightly colored outfits, swaying with a sparkly dressed Feist as if it were a scene from a Broadway musical, entranced millions.

When the whirlwind was over, Feist had hit a wall. Including her tour for “The Reminder,” she had been on the road for seven years, with almost no time to sit and contemplate new material, or spend time with family and friends. So she retreated, taking about two years off.

“It’s so funny, I almost don’t even remember having time off,” she said, laughing. “It took about a year and a half of just floating before I got interesting in reframing things, which is ultimately what songwriting is.”