FEIST - Pleasure

"...Pleasure gives you the sense that you’re hearing the album being recorded in real-time — a simplicity that is sure to make for a powerful live performance when Feist tours later this year — but there are certain luxuries that can only be captured in the studio, and the album is at its most playful when the outside world leaks into Feist’s own. She’s always enjoyed popping the insular bubble that recording an album provides — think of the chirping birds on “The Park” or the busy nature tableau of Metals closer “Get It Wrong, Get It Right” — but here her use of environment is often accompanied with a winking sense of humor. Two specific instances stick out: the end of “Any Party,” which closes on the faint hum of a party as the hook of lead single “Pleasure” bleeds out of a passing car, and the conclusion of “A Man Is Not His Song,” which fades into a Mastodon sample that serves as a nod to the music landscape’s overbearing masculinity. Both are discursions that provide some levity, and it demonstrates that the real world has no qualms about encroaching on the protective casing that Feist creates for herself.

Still, the album feels largely unmoored from time and expectation. Feist spent much of the six years between albums soul-searching, wondering if she was ever going to play music again, and it’s telling that she found a creative spark in something as distinctive and personal as her singular voice and presence. Metals felt like a pointed reaction to The Reminder’s popularity; The Reminder was, at least in part, a shoot-for-the-stars attempt at mainstream success. But Pleasure is a long look inward, a no-frills depiction of Feist at her rawest, and her personality and compassion are what come through strongest on these songs..." - Stereogum