Feist is an 11-time Juno Award-winning artist, and her next album, Multitudes, releases this Friday, April 14.

Ahead of the album’s release, Feist connected with Jade to talk about how the album emerged from both the pandemic and the birth of Feist’s daughter — the combination of which sparked deep philosophical musings.

Listen to the complete conversation using the audio player above, and read a transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Edited for time and clarity.

Jade: It's Jade. You're listening to The Current, and I'm so grateful to have Feist on with me right now. We've been looking forward to this new album, a first new album in six years, Multitudes, it's going to be coming out on April 14. Feist, thank you so much for making some time.

Feist: Hi, nice to see you.

Jade: Yeah, it's so good to see you. I was thinking about this conversation when they told me that you would have some time because you were one of the last people that I spoke to before the pandemic. And I was thinking about the conversation we had, because it was about your podcast, the Pleasure Studies podcast, which was all about connecting with people,  and seeing them go through struggles and kind of finding your own way by hearing other people kind of overcome challenges. And I just thought it was so... you know, maybe you were like forward thinking or something, because that was way before people started really looking for those kinds of connections and those conversations. So I was curious, you know, during the pandemic, if it was something that you returned to, or you thought about, that podcast or those stories during your own trials.

Feist: It's so funny, I haven't even imagined that that was sort of a foreshadowing! Who could have known that the kind of baseline sort of struggle that everyone is sort of enduring quietly, while we all pretend otherwise and go through our days, that it was going to be so double-down, amplified globally. So I just remember the first week that it all started, I had this really strange — my mind is reaching to its very farthest tendrils of connection, like, "Oh, my God, that particular taxi driver in Cairo, that guy is having this experience right now." "Oh, that boy I met in the village, and we hung out and like played in the river for 10 minutes in Malawi, that guy is having this experience right now." You know, that my aunt in her farm in New Brunswick, she's having... I mean, of course, we were all living a sort of parallel lives that look as different as they possibly could. But of course, we wake up in the morning, we all, there's these sort of core similarities that we could be feeling and a connection all the time.

But at that moment, the connection was like, so clear to me, and it felt so special in a way, because it brought my awareness squarely back to where I was, like my two feet on the ground, I was like, "Well, as much as they are there, and I was there, as I, with such hubris, zigzagged the planet for my whole life, now, I'm going to just be here." And it kind woke up all my senses to this sort of this uncomfortable, but slightly exciting: I've never invested in the right here. I've always thought that elsewhere had the dazzle or that there was something exciting to go and find elsewhere, elsewhere, elsewhere. You know, it was always, "Oh, you need me on Tuesday? Well, I'm sorry, I'm leaving on Monday." You know?

Jade: That's where so many people have been, especially musicians; you know, the struggle of forward momentum and that idea of constantly having to move forward, constantly having to make new music, constantly having to, you know, be in a creative, forward motion, to have a bit of pause. Were you instantly starting to make music because you needed to have something that was that fresh and new? Or was it kind of nice to just kind of settle into something?

Feist: Well, it was uncomfortable, for lots of reasons. But namely, because my daughter was born four months before the whole thing happened. So I think I wasn't quite in the philosophical enjoyment of a new way of being. I mean, we can tend to forget now that it actually felt dangerous at the time; I mean, it was. So I think, you know, it's all gone to a bit of a fog of, of just worry about this tiny little being who I was the source of life, and then life became a completely different thing than what I had known previous. So it was... writing took a backseat for a little while.

Jade: As it should, to be fair! So when you talk about Multitudes, which is the name of the new album, again, coming out April 14, were you thinking about that in the way of, OK, I'm a mom, I'm a musician. I'm a human, you know, working through life? Or where does this title come from?

Feist: Yeah, I think I started to feel the almost like a flipbook, like, you know, you flip your thumb through [and] there's movement, there's shift and change, but they're just the minutia difference from one photo to the next. You know, I started to feel that in my own sort of life timeline, I started to feel that from my littlest girl tendencies that slowly grew the person and the personality and the ego and the decisions and you know, but I started to equally echo to my 96-year-old aspirational elder self who has got sparkly eyes and she gives zero — I can't swear, can I? Right, you know what I mean!

Jade: Yeah!

Feist: Yeah, she's got long grey braids, and she's kind, and she gets it, you know? And she would giggle at the 12-year-old's tendency to be dramatic as much as to me in this current moment, my investment in my drama, she somehow is past it. And I started to feel like OK, time is this accordion and it's just, I had felt it compress. I had felt that it was eternal. And now it's opening up and I'm seeing the ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, the flipbook-ness of it. And that before I know it, I will wake up 96 — I mean, God willing, lifeforce willing — and I need to start to build now who she will wake up as. And I can't just presume that there is a certain happy path, you know? I started to feel my personal responsibility in these decisions I'm making, this daily way of being, you know? Let alone the profound, roots down and shoots up, sort of the horizontal, vertical multitudes, not just in the timeline laterally, but like, the quality of each moment is kind of like a multiplicity, because I can stay up here on the surface, just sort of taking little gulps of air and never going deep. You know what I mean? It's sort of when they say, "feet on the ground head in the clouds," you know, just somehow understanding the quality of these moments. There's a billion ways that I can be in this moment.

Jade: "In Lightning," it's kind of a positive song in the way where you're like, accepting the "yes, and..." sort of idea. And I think that's a nice way to wrap up this conversation, to listen to "In Lightning." Is there anything you can share about that song in particular, before we take a listen to it?

Feist: Well, I think that's a good choice in that it speaks to this intention, because the choosing of the negative lens, I started to get this visual of these intermittent blasts of light, and actually storms are so exciting, you know? But it's a choice whether I invest in what's revealed in that little blast of illumination, or if I'm just going to be like, "Ooh, storm, storm, storm, storm," you know? Just investing in the, ooh, the deluge, the drama, the brooding clouds. There is a choice to just glean what I can in these little blasts of clarity.

Jade: Well, I think that's a beautiful way to wrap things up. Feist's new album, Multitudes again, it's out April 14. She's going to be in Minnesota at First Avenue on May 3, with this new style of performance, which I think is going to be very connective as well, the in-the-round style. So again, First Avenue, May 3, the album, Multitudes, out April 14. Feist, thank you so much for making some time.

Feist: Thank you. It was lovely to talk to you.

Jade: Yeah, have a great rest of your day.

Feist: Yeah, you too.

Jade: Thank you. All right. Let's take a listen. It's "In Lightning" on The Current.

External Link

Feist - official site