06.20.07 :: Feist with Grizzly Bear :: Pantages Theater

Here's what I recommend to everyone: theater shows. My experience seeing Arcade Fire at the Chicago Theater was superlative, and I've had similarly great times at the Orpheum here in Minneapolis seeing Sigur Ros and New Pornographers. This, however, would be my first trip to the smaller Pantages Theater.

In scope, it's a lot closer to the Fitzgerald in Saint Paul than the other theaters in downtown Minneapolis, but it's all the more charming for it. It's got all the trappings of a theater show--good sight lines, seating, decorative elements on the walls--but it's not overly baroque or full of windy staircases and ratty seat cushions.

By the time Grizzly Bear starts, the place is only maybe half full, but that kind of suits Grizzly Bear's live presentation. Their last album, Yellow House, sounds like it could have been recorded in an empty theater anyways, and live, they strip out a lot of the texture of the songs to reveal their skeletal beauty. Only half their set is drawn from my favorite album of last year, including "Lullabye," "Little Brother," "Knife" and the closer, "On a Neck, On a Spit." Onstage, they perform with economy, singer Ed Droste still tentatively holding the mic stand and multi-instrumentalist Chris Taylor spending a good amount of the time bent over a mic into which he played flute and clarinet to loop as background textures. The other thing this set brings home is just how much Dan Rossen contributes to the band. Most of the press centers around Droste as the singer, but Rossen sings at least half the stuff, and possibly more.

Above them hang strings of Christmas lights that I can only presume will be used for Feist's set, and so hang unlit--a kind of perfect visual complement to the low-wattage and rusty organic beauty their songs are imbued with. Drummer Chris Bear, I realize at one point, has no kick drum at all, but just a snare and a floor tom tuned to the high range of a kick. He's also just a killer drummer. In addition to a couple of newer (or possibly older--I'm not that familiar with their back catalog) tunes, they play a cover of "He Hit Me (Felt Like a Kiss)," a track written in 1962 by Carole King and Gerry Goffin and recorded by The Crystals. It's a fairly harrowing track about spousal abuse, but it's given an entirely new twist by Droste and co., given a.) Droste not changing the sex of the song's characters and b.) being gay. Add to that their supremely dark take on the music for the song and the cover becomes a multi-valent exploration of abuse and power dynamics.

The real highlight comes with "On a Neck, On a Spit," which remains probably my favorite track from Yellow House. Once upon a time, I wrote this about that: "This tune has a kind of fractal quality to it--it's at least three different songs in one, and it embodies in miniature the grand dynamic sweep from intimate to epic that made this my favorite album of the year. The liltingly beautiful melody and pastoral imagery ('The yards around your feet / Fall away while you're asleep') of the first part give way to the nearly epic middle section, which teases resolution multiple times before giving up. Suddenly the song is overtaken by a jangly and dark acoustic guitar that paves the way for the bracingly cacophonous coda, a lament that could be sung by a man slowly going mad: 'Each day, spend it with you now / All my time, spend it with you now / Out here no one can hear me.'"

Still true. Onwards to Feist.

When the lights drop to introduce Feist's set, you could say the crowd is excited. So excited that they cheer loudly when the first silhouette crosses the stage, even though it's clearly not Leslie Feist. They settle down a bit, but when Feist finally emerges, they go nuts. She launches straight away into "Honey Honey" from The Reminder, a gentle song built around a mellow synth bass line and her own looped vocals. There a little guitar here and a little guitar there, but overall, it's strikingly bare, but she's got the crowd right in the palm of her hand, so it's not hard to catch every nuance of the performance.

Her set is a wide-ranging mix of rockers ("When I Was a Young Girl," "My Moon, My Man" and "I Feel It All") and barely there ballads ("The Park," "Intuition"). This is the fourth time I've seen her, now, and her ability to go from full band to solo is getting increasingly fluid, and as her popularity has grown, so has her audience's willingness to go along with this format. She gets everybody to sing along several times, engages in more than her fair share of stage banter and struts about the stage like Mick Jagger when she's on fire about a song. When she's not, she stands very still behind the mic, hair in her face and Guild Starfire guitar slung low--very low--using her ultimate weapon: her voice. It's rather difficult to describe exactly what about her voice is so seductive, but it has something to do with the way that it sits ouside the traditional spectrum of evaluating singers. If you'd believe American Idol, there's a one-dimensional spectrum that extends from terrible singers up through very accomplished singers that has only to do with technical ability. But Feist's voice seems both simultaneously untutored and extremely flexible and capable. It's brimming over with character,a syrupy smooth honey-ness that bleeds charm.

Oddly, though, the sound wasn't impeccable at Pantages. It wasn't bad, but her voice didn't come through as I've heard it do at the Varsity. Now obviously that's a smaller room, but you'd expect the sound at a theater to be great. Her performance didn't seem to suffer at all, though, as she confidently led her band (which seemed to include the drummer from Snowden. Am I crazy? Can anyone tell me if he might be moonlighting with Feist's band?) through a lengthy set of songs from her two albums, as well as one cover. I couldn't place the cover, but she did say that anyone who could identify it in the first 30 seconds would win a ... Grizzly Bear CD. If anybody knows that it was, lemme know.

Also: I bumped into Josh Grier from Tapes 'n' Tapes in the lobby while he was waiting around for Droste to come out. They know each other, apparently. Not surprising, really. Sounds like Tapes is in the process of writing for a new record which they're going to begin recording later in the summer.

Also, I had a camera was unable to get a dececnt shot from where I sat. Having already barely squeaked into the show under the wire after my tickets were stranded in Memphis (long story), I didn't feel like pushing my luck by pressing for photos. I'm sure there'll be some over at City Pages, as I bumped into music editor Sarah Askari there.

Complete Feist setlist:

Honey Honey
When I Was a Young Girl
I'm Sorry
My Moon, My Man
The Park
Limit to Your Love
I Feel It All
Intuition
Now At Last
Gatekeeper
(cover)
The Water
Mushaboom
1 2 3 4

ENCORE:
Brandy Alexander
Sea Lion Woman
Let It Die