An Incomplete Smorgasbord Of Creativity
Feist has been in the music industry for over a decade now, so her sixth album Multitudes should give audiences the hint that multitudes are indeed what she possesses. While she has given herself a degree of tenure, giving off the impression that she’s knowledgeable about what clicks and what doesn’t in the process of creating an album, this go at an original tracklist is sadly stale and static.
The art here is in disarray from the very beginning. “In Lightning” either should not have been included on this album or should’ve been characterized by a different sound, because it sticks out like a sore thumb. That’s not to say that it’s fraught with mediocrity. Much to the contrary, it works like a montage, as the instrumentation comes together as one to create a sound that evokes images of a tempest upon the sea and its aftermath of serenity. Sure, in that way it’s unexpected, subverting expectations, but, coming before everything else, it feels as if it’s out of place, and would benefit from being placed elsewhere. Though it’s as wondrous as a wonderland and assisted by a decent bit of thumping, it doesn’t provide any space for rest.
Later, a standard differing from the vision of the show-starter is set for the entire album with the second track, “Forever Before,” and it’s one that marks its energy as introspective and consistently tranquil. After this, Feist becomes a poet under the spotlight above some stage of a lounge out there; she quietly sings through her multitudes, and creatively plays with all the possible variations of language, the infinitely various directions it can travel.
“Love Who We Are Meant To” grants the album a specific theme, which, as it’s an essential component of compelling art, is bound to assist the appeal of an album like this. The theme here would be love and all its complexities. Feist grapples with it, too, in a nuanced way, not treating love as the heavenly journey it’s made out to be in fairytales. On this track, she even sings, “Sometimes we don’t get to love who are meant to,” asserting that love is in fact grim, overpowered by hopeless romantics. By classifying love in this way, Multitudes transforms itself from merely music into a lane for the brokenhearted to shed their tears on, each song being a stop for consolation along the way.
Feist deals in states of being, using a folksy guitar to cast the aura of a flower child around herself. Existing within and without like Nick Carraway, she wrecks the listener on countless occasions, singing, “Love is not a thing you try to do” on “Hiding Out In The Open.” The ins and outs of love with which she seeks to address morph themselves into the material typical of fever dreams. A ghost she becomes — although she’s not here to haunt anyone, but instead to guide.
Another fun track off the album is “I Took All Of My Rings Off.” It’s distorted and kaleidoscopic, hanging out with an intense bass and a sound similar to the alerts of a submarine’s sonar system. Wondrous as it may be, a vigorous distraction in the form of shenanigans with a keyboard causes a wall to block this track’s trip to greatness.
Once “Become The Earth” arrives, though, Feist obnoxiously tries to vary her voice. Trying to sound dissimilar to what she’s been doing all along, she falls short of furthering the maze of her ingenuity. Opposite to the buoyancy she had for a considerable portion of the album, everything after follows the same pattern.
Multitudes is a bit underwhelming by its completion. After a certain point, all of the tracks on the album sound like one continuous song, since nothing really changes in Feist’s voice. Repetition and a dearth of any sort of variety are usually unwelcome in the world of music, those two things unfortunately being what Feist’s latest work suffers from most.
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