About

Feist’s first album in six years reflects on secrets and shame, loneliness and tenderness, care and fatigue and is at its core a study on self-awareness. As the fourth full-length from the singer/songwriter born Leslie Feist, Pleasure builds off the warm naturalism of the Polaris Prize-winning Metals and emerges as her most formally defiant and expansive work so far. And while each album is a departure from the next, Pleasure finds the four-time Grammy Award nominee again showing the extraordinary depth of her artistry.

Recorded over the course of three months—in Stinson Beach, Upstate New York, and Paris —Pleasure was co-produced by Feist with longtime collaborators Renaud Letang and Mocky. In addition to reaffirming Feist as a cagily inventive guitar player, the album threads her shape-shifting and often haunting vocals into sparse and raw arrangements. – Press release

“Pleasure reminds you that Feist’s simmering introspection is the ideal vehicle for the more delicate facets of her voice. She can still surprise with a quick shift from cocked-hip talk-singing to yelps of fury, but her high range breaking through a dark sky like the sun remains the most stunning view.

On Pleasure, Feist faces middle age with a slow-burning ruckus. She accepts that getting older is growing comfortable with knowing you'll never have all the answers. And she savors the ride nonetheless—like she says, pleasure is what we’re here for—because this is it, this is life. When she finally wonders, on the swirling torch song that closes the record, “When they cart me away, will they say that I died already years ago?” we know the answer. Feist may have hidden away for a while and thought about giving up music before making this album, but a decade since she broke through, she’s settling in like a long-distance runner staring down the horizon she knows will outlast her. She will quietly make her mark in the meantime.” – Pitchfork

 “In considering the pain/pleasure binary, Pleasure is artfully arranged to include a number of dueling perspectives. Loud and quiet is the most obvious experiment here; at its core, this is Feist’s most stripped-down record to date — it was recorded live and you can hear an analog-tape hiss throughout. And yet, the grainy, placid “A Man Is Not His Song” ends explosively, tacking on a quickie sample of Mastodon’s galvanic “High Road” at the end. The bass-led “Century” contrasts Feist’s meaty soprano register with Jarvis Cocker’s ominous baritone and ends mid-chorus, seemingly when the track has reached its apex.”
– Paste Magazine

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