Feist brings versatile style to Carnegie

All you need to know about Feist’s performance at the Carnegie Music Hall on Thursday is… All you need to know about Feist’s performance at the Carnegie Music Hall on Thursday is that despite an announcement about an upcoming Decemberists show, made minutes before she came on stage, Feist’s concert was not overshadowed.

Feist and her four-man backup band gave the crowd their money’s worth and then some, running through a 20-song set list that spanned almost two hours and drew from her own material and that of her friends and fellow artists.

The word of the night was versatility. At times, Feist rocked harder than anyone had a right to expect. At other moments, her hushed acoustic songs brought the intimate hall to pin-drop quiet. During one extended sequence of covers, someone in the front row was even put to sleep. Feist was not put off by this: “I sing lullabies, I don’t care,” she shrugged.

While the obscure songs were out in full force, there were also plenty of cuts from this year’s outstanding breakthrough album, The Reminder, with 10 of its 13 tracks making their way to the set list.

These songs ranged from the driving, up-tempo pop of “I Feel It All” to the uncomfortably fragile “The Water,” featuring Feist on piano. “I Feel It All” brought a loud cheer when she changed the lyrics “Now I know I want to win the war” to “Now I know I want to stop the war,” despite the likelihood that a sizeable portion of the anti-war contingent was camped out on Forbes Avenue a few blocks away.

Another highlight was the stomping, piano-driven rocker “My Moon My Man,” which made excellent use of the backyard canopy light display. The song’s sneaky, unsettling electronic flourishes made an excellent transition to the stage, which was surprising given the volume of the main instruments.

Feist was suitably impressed by the venue. “We did it guys. We made it to Carnegie Hall!” she exclaimed early on. Later, before busting out a song from her 2004 album Let It Die, she said, “This is an oldie, but it’s kind of new because we stopped playing it for a while. We re-corked it. I’m trying to be classy in this place – with wine references.”

She was in similarly good spirits for the duration of the night, which made the show feel more like an open-mic night than a performance from an artist on Interscope Records. Crowd participation was encouraged on a few occasions, and requests were taken, if not necessarily acted upon.

The regular set closed with a trio of fan favorites: “Gatekeeper,” “Mushaboom” and the recently ubiquitous “1 2 3 4.” Currently making the rounds on iPod commercials, the song lost absolutely nothing in its live translation, with the crowd playing the part of the choir. The only downside was that everyone knew it was coming when one of the band members reached for his banjo.

The three-song encore was also all highlights, particularly the rollicking Nina Simone cover, “Sea Lion,” which contained dueling guitar solos.

On a recent performance of “1 2 3 4” on Letterman, Feist assembled a choir of nearly every notable artist from Canada, as well as some from the U.S. Clearly, she’s highly regarded in the music community, and on Thursday night, it was pretty clear why.