Daytrotter's Best 15 Albums of 2007: No. 5 Feist's "The Reminder"
Jan 31, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Jen Pagnini
Commercial America, or commercial world, for what it is, created the happy accident that Leslie Feist and all of the straight as an arrow aristocrats, who now own a copy of this record, never saw coming. _The Reminder_ serves as a very important lesson in how-the-fuck and DUH all at the same time. You couldn’t have thought anything odder could happen than Feist finding that the mass market is enamored with her and her sharp songs which dig interstates of mole holes when they’ve impacted just to become the inner voice that sounds like your own lovable secrets acting out. The people who make these iPod gadgets couldn’t have been any kinder in their assistance toward this Canadian’s ascension. They basically gave her the rocket shoes and the get pack, but she’s the one who already knew how to operate the damn things before she knew what they were or had them in her possession. The thought that Feist wasn’t going to get to where she was after the Applers put their well-groomed heads together is myth and absurd. One time with her in a venue - even one time with her on an over-sized stage at a Lollapalooza festival where her starkness hushed tens of thousands with a beating down sun doing some cooking - hearing those plaintive and spry and alive as a bottle of wine songs dance around like ear phantoms is as affecting as a near death, all life experience. It takes a greater hold on you that you’d expect it to, kind of ripping your needed breath from you, whisking you away. _The Reminder_ is just too hard to deny its perfect corners and its arresting sense of touch, where you feel it putting its hands on you, bending your ears and massaging the tense muscles in your shoulders, making shivers.
*The prior words of Jonathan Eaton as pertaining to Feist’s album:*
"_The Reminder_ makes me want to be in a French manor, but the closest I come to any of that is playing ultimate-frisbee on Monday nights, and that’s not even close at all. The record makes me want to get my ear pierced and dangle an Eiffel Tower from my lobe. I want to cook my meat much less and be able to recognize something from the smell of a cork. I want to serve both colors of wine, one from the left hand and one from the right, and tell my guests about the music playing on the Victrola. "Oh this? It is nice isn’t it? Yes she is Canadian, it makes me want to dance too." Then I want to dance. Eventually though our flailing French hands will need to stop dancing as the hand claps change to brushed snare swipes and harp strings - this will be when the French kissing begins.
All that aside, we can’t spend our whole lives dreaming.
Today, I built a fence around a vegetable garden while listening to _The Reminder_ through one of those portable speaker jawns that you plug your iPod into. Really I did. It went well. The fence is mainly to keep deer out, but it is also so the garden is like a room. In 200 years I plan on recording a record in this room. The record will appeal to all sorts of people. If you are driving back with your parents from your sister’s graduation in Boston, this record will please all family members in the car. If you are going to someone’s home that is a big Pitchfork-head, or a person who is an anti-Pitchfork-head, they will both be pleased when you gift a tape with this record on side A and _The Reminder_ on side B and label it "Records recorded in 200-Year-Old Places.""
*Daytrotter's Best 15 Albums of 2007*
15. John Vanderslice -- _Emerald City_
14. The National -- _Boxer_
13. These United States -- _The Forest and the Garden_
12. The Teeth -- _You're My Lover Now_
11. Dr. Dog -- _We All Belong_
10. Brother Ali -- _The Undisputed Truth_
9. Delta Spirit -- _Ode To Sunshine_
8. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings -- _100 Days, 100 Nights_
7. Kings of Leon -- _Because of the Times_
6. Cass McCombs -- _Dropping The Writ_
5. Feist -- _The Reminder_
