New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Feist has today released "Borrow Trouble", the brilliant new single from the multi-award winning, hugely influential musician's new album Multitudes, which will be released April 14 to Universal Music/Polydor France/Universal Music. Three tracks from the album are already available - "In Lightning", "Love Who We Are Meant To" and "Hiding Out in The Open".
Recorded in a bespoke residential studio in the California Redwoods, Multitudes was produced by
Feist with longtime collaborators Robbie Lackritz (The Weather Station, Bahamas, Robbie Robertson) and
Mocky (Jamie Lidell, Vulfpeck, Kelela), with "Borrow Trouble" co-produced by
Blake Mills (Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple,
Perfume Genius).
"Borrow Trouble caused some trouble in trying to finish the recording," comments
Feist of the new single. "It began as a contemplative acoustic morality tale and shape shifted itself into the sound of trouble itself. It's a mess that holds its own logic. It's the convincing cacophony that thoughts can be. It saws away at you until your overwhelm pops an air supply in the form of another idea, a solution that starts with accepting there's no such thing as perfection.
"Mike Mills (the filmmaker), directed me deeper into the tangle, insisted I play drums 'because you're not a drummer!' and Amir Yaghmai brought the fist pumping drone of violins. Early on, when I was writing it Charles Spearin said 'yah but what does borrowing trouble mean?' And I said "It's an expression from the old days," which became the chorus. May as well let the song explain, like I'm doing now."
Feist's sixth full-length and first release since 2017's critically lauded Pleasure, Multitudes took shape soon after the birth of her daughter and sudden death of her father, a back-to-back convergence of life-altering events that left the Canadian singer/songwriter with "nothing performative in me anymore." As she cleansed her songwriting of any tendency to obscure unwanted truths,
Feist slowly made her way toward a batch of songs rooted in a raw and potent realism which is touched with otherworldly beauty.
Largely written and workshopped during an intensely communal experimental show of the same name through 2021 and 2022, the songs developed in parallel with and were deeply influenced by the mutuality of the unconventional experience. The Multitudes production, developed by
Feist with legendary designer Rob Sinclair (David Byrne's American Utopia,
Peter Gabriel, Tame Impala) involved a subtle dramaturgical disarming of normalized conventions between performer and observer.
Multitudes was the first live show to be designed with 360-degree immersive sound incorporated into the production. The album was also recorded with immersive sound designed into its production - in pristine audiophile grade Dolby ATMOS - by multi-Grammy nominated producer-engineer Robbie Lackritz.
Born in Nova Scotia but mostly raised in Calgary,
Feist first explored her idiosyncratic musicality by playing in a local punk band as a teenager and later made her debut with 1999's Monarch (Lay Your Jewelled Head Down) (an independent release primarily sold at merch tables). Along with co-founding Juno Award-winning indie-rock collective Broken Social Scene,
Feist next achieved breakout success with her full-length sophomore effort Let It Die (winner of Alternative Album of the Year at the 2004 Juno Awards). Released in 2007, The Reminder earned international acclaim and landed on best-of-the-year lists from outlets like Pitchfork, NPR, Spin, and Rolling Stone, in addition to winning
Feist the 2007 Shortlist
Music Prize and garnering four Grammy Award nominations. Now certified gold, the album features her iconic smash single "1234," a Billboard Hot 100-charting hit that paved the way for Feist's appearance on "Saturday Night Live" and "Sesame Street." In 2011,
Feist returned with the Polaris
Music Prize-winning Metals, named the best album of the year by New York Times chief popular music critic Jon Pareles. With AV Club hailing 2017's Pleasure as her "most daring work to date" and NPR praising the album as "wrenching in its honesty,"
Feist went on to premiere the Pleasure Studies podcast in 2019 - awarded "Podcast of the Year" by Apple Podcasts - and soon began developing the Multitudes live show, a boundary-pushing collaboration conceived by
Feist and Robbie Lackritz and developed with artist/filmmaker Colby Richardson, artist Heather Goodchild and Artistic Producer Mary Hickson.
The Sunday Times "one of pop's most beautiful voices"
The New Cue "delicately beautiful"
Top40-Charts.com "Legendary indie artist"
NY Times "Electrifying Return"
Pitchfork "Striking"
Rolling Stone "Indie favourite's"
Fader "At long last,
Feist is back"
NME "Feist has announced her sixth studio album"
Feist Multitudes Track List:
1 In Lightning
2 Forever Before
3 Love Who We Are Meant To
4 Hiding Out in The Open
5 The Redwing
6 I Took All Of My Rings Off
7 Of Womankind
8 Become The Earth
9 Borrow Trouble
10 Martyr Moves
11
Calling All The Gods
12 Song For Sad Friends
