Wednesday 07/09/05 Feist, Nedelle @ Schubas, Chicago

Feist skewers the conventions of gig etiquette dead.  On tuning:  “Now we’re going from death metal tuning to Fleetwood Mac tuning to Wings tuning.”  On encores:  “Was that a long enough wait-time to come back on stage, Chicago?  I was once on tour with this band and they waited until they heard another swell in applause.  They ended up waiting nine minutes.”  She looks around the miniscule venue.  “I was gonna wait that long too but I didn’t have a wall to hide behind.”  On the Bluetoothy monitor in her ear:  “This Madonna earpiece thing is driving me nuts.  I think George Bush is messing with the reception.”  She yanks it out, drops it on the stage like a dead fish.

 

Culottes, flip-flops, and a children’s guitar that speaks only “East German,” Leslie Feist is an effortless raconteur.  She also has one of the year’s best albums in ‘Let It Die’.  But do her interpretations and originals hold up onstage?

 

For the first three songs, Feist apes the barebones style of support act, Nedelle, a wide-eyed San Franciscan backed only by her toy guitar with nylon strings singing songs about pensioners withering away and falling out of love at 30,000 feet.  Nedelle goes so far as to request the audience’s assistance in giving her hospice song a title.  Before Gigwise can yell out, “Help the Aged (And Then Help Them Some More),” we’re drowned out by the precious suggestions of our fellow gig-goers.  Nedelle gently shoots down every suggested title in favour of her own.  “Right now, we’re just calling it, ‘The Nearly Departed’.”  Groan.  Lesson 77:  Don’t engage the crowd.  The crowd will talk back.  Worse yet, they might even engage in a sing-along.  It’s your fault, Feist.  You encouraged it.

 

She is having us repeat the mantra of a B-side as she digs into the depths of her red backpack.  What will she unearth?  A kazoo?  A camera?  A colouring book?  Wrong on all counts.  Feist is now wielding a tape recorder, handheld, which she uses to record our glorious voices, an action capped off by her whispering “Chicago” into the device’s microphone.  Nice gesture, right?  Heartwarming.  Gigwise stands stiff-lipped and sour, nursing his over-iced gin and tonic.  Who came here to hear these mongs sing?

 

For the sublime, ‘One Evening’—sublime on record, anyway—she rustles up all us sheep to supply the harmonizing “ba-ba-baaaas” and hits the record button again.  Infuriating.  Why did this have to turn into a campfire?  Everything on the album that sounded so sophisticated degenerates into a country-western dirge live, ‘Gatekeeper’ the lone exception, thanks to that kiddie guitar that speaks only German.  Completely forgetting her swing through the city earlier in the year, a gracious Feist says, “This is my first time in Chicago.”  Of course this sets the crowd off.  “What?  Are you kidding?  What about back in the winter when you opened for British Sea Power?”  Gigwise feels caught in the crosshairs of a sewing circle scuffle.  “First lucid time,” Feist laughs, before neutering Bee Gees cover ‘Inside & Out’ of all its inherent Scissor Sisterly groove.  As satisfied attendees cycle out the doors with their talk of skipping class tomorrow, a sleep-deprived Gigwise grits his teeth in reaction to his shrill half-seven alarm buzzer.  Help the aged, indeed.