Feist on time, constructing an external self, and her 'most selfish endeavour ever'

Feist's new album Pleasure tells such a rich story that she's been stumbling over her words trying to explain it further. Photo / supplied

Over the phone from Calgary, Leslie Feist is marveling at the abstract nature of a conversation that crosses time zones and hemispheres. We establish that we're speaking from different days - she in Tuesday, myself in Wednesday - and Feist laughs. "Picture all the satellites that are bouncing our voices around in outer space right now," she says. "It's crazy."

Feist grew up in Calgary, but this time she's only there to play a show as part of the Pleasure tour, which follows the release of her latest album of the same name. She's just checked into a hotel when we speak, which seems strange - to stay in a hotel in a city one knows so well - but Feist is pensive.

"I was just kind of enjoying it," she says. "My mum came just for 10 minutes when I arrived, and we were standing on the balcony, looking out at the river that's in front, and we were telling each other different memories we have.

"This is very close to where I grew up," she says, "so she has memories of me as a 12-year-old running and asking for a bus fare - you know, like, 'Mum! I don't have money for the bus!' Apparently that happened just outside this hotel. So I think it's great. Time overlaps on itself after you've been in the world for a while."

It's like life is folding in a way, I offer. "Exactly," she says. "Like a Japanese fan."

Feist performing in New York. Photo / Getty

Themes of time, loops, paradoxes and memory are weaved throughout the rich tapestry of Pleasure, Feist's fifth studio album. After 2011's Metals, which embraced vast and gritty soundscapes, the Canadian singer-songwriter pivoted towards a more structurally spare and emotionally generous sound. The record views happiness and sadness externally, exploring how one's headspace can dictate - and distort - their wellbeing; its 11 tracks tell such a multi-faceted story, Feist says she's been tripping over her words and having a hard time explaining them further. "I don't really have stories beyond what is there," she says, "but I don't want to be too reticent."

Feist acknowledges reticence on Get Not High, Get Not Low, a folky ode to fluctuations of mood, on which she sings: "As long as I stay closed liked that/secretive to stay intact." The lyric examines the distance between being honest with the world and being honest with the self - a contrast Feist says she took a while to recognise.

"Even when someone's incredibly intimate with you, there's a certain degree away from your true self - you're holding up this other version of yourself that we show people," she says.

"You know in situations where you get white knuckles? Where something about the situation is just causing you this like, 'Grrr', you know what I'm talking about? Usually, it's like, 'This doesn't compute', 'This is upsetting me', 'This is not how I thought this moment would go'. All of those things essentially are the externalised version of yourself that's just not driving with the inside.

"It took me years to take a look at that, what was behind that kind of construction - you construct a version of yourself. With your closest friends or with anyone you love, there can be a lot of unnecessary effort put into pretending to be something other than you are."

In a way, it seems as though

Pleasure

was Feist's documentation of that process - laying to rest that grapple between the internal and external self, and taking aim at a future of clarity and understanding. And as she plays the songs on tour, Feist says the Gordian knot within the album is beginning to unravel.

"I make a record about a time that I'm still in the thick of, and then by the time the record's finished, and I've now sung those songs for months and months, hundreds of times, the puzzle inside the song has been solved," she says.

"There is something in the repetition of touring, and the repetition of facing the ideas inside the songs. It's like a riddle that presents its own solution eventually, from just doing it over and over and facing those questions over and over from all these different vantage points.

"How could you not help but solve those Rubik's cubes eventually? I don't think I've solved the puzzle, but I definitely have a new perspective on the questions I was posing in writing those songs."

Feist laughs. "It's kind of the most selfish endeavour ever."

LOWDOWN:

Who: Feist
What: The Pleasure Tour
When: Saturday, November 25
Where: The Powerstation