Feist's fifth studio album is a welcome return to the music world and a surprise departure from her award winning 2011 release, Metals. After a six-year hiatus from writing and recording, Canadian singer songwriter Leslie Feist returned to the studio for three months to craft the spellbinding 11 tracks on the album Pleasure. From the opening title track to the delicate and optimistic closer ("Young Up"), the album brings forward Feist's voice, lyrics, and guitar playing unlike her previous releases.

Much of Pleasure sounds like it was captured on the first takes from the studio. It's Feist's most introspective and personal album to date; it almost sounds like she is alone in the studio, capturing the energy that had built up over her time away from music. Jarvis Cocker's contribution to the track, "Century," is the only reminder that there were others in the room during the making of Pleasure. It's a raw and intimate dive into self-awareness with themes related to coping with reaching midlife as an artist and as a human amid the challenges of this modern world.

The songs on Pleasure oscillate from quiet vocal passages to jarring guitar riffs as Feist exercises her craft on the instrument that was the genesis for most of the songs on the album. Pleasure isn't the indie-pop album that some fans might have anticipated. Although there's no shortage of catchy guitar riffs and well-crafted choruses, the album is more cohesive than her previous works. Listening to Pleasure is like reading poetry that expresses moments of emotional sincerity.

Feist's Pleasure is out now.

Resources

Feist - official site

Related

• Hear the title track from Feist's first album in 6 years, 'Pleasure'
• Theft of the Dial: Feist (2012)
• Feist performs in studio (2005)