Pleasure is easily Feist’s most difficult album, far from the immediate accessibility of The Reminder, but she's a captivating performer and it may well be her richest statement.
These all contribute to the record’s capacity for surprise, a playfulness that accounts for the most literal representation of Pleasure’s eponymous emotional state.
The rougher, rawer songs here demonstrate her desire to create music that she can support with her own “musculature,” to use another word she’s used lately.
Tonally, Feist exposes a storm of feeling on Pleasure, probing an abyss of her own confusion, lack of trust in others and self-imposed isolation, and yet also a core tendency to love and care.
She's more than capable of penning a good tune, but Pleasure presents a unique, uncompromising vision of intimacy and enjoyment. True to its name, this is the sound of Feist fighting through the bullshit of being human to have a good time despite it all.
Feist embraces rawness and introspection like she never has before, evoking a powerful sense of intimacy while still retaining her knack for writing beautiful arrangements.
It’s minimalist, and it’s very, very raw. In the best possible sense, it’s an open sore of a record.
Pleasure is a record of patience, and each surprising twist in its understated songwriting is used to illustrate how Feist keeps her cool.
We have seen a progression through an imaginary house of sound. Let It Die was her bedroom record, The Reminder her living room record, Metals was her front porch record, and Pleasure is her garage record.
On Pleasure, she’s reduced the sing-alongs to a minimum, stripping her songs of almost any rock and roll abandon for a folk-based template that is beautifully minimalist and measured.
Repeated listens flag up little quirks here and there within the already excellent tunes and vocals.
2017 keeps the strong singer/songwriter releases coming with Feist's Pleasure.
That’s not to say that the album isn’t accessible ... but these songs about maturity and internal toughness often move in mysterious ways, leaving plenty of space for Feist’s probing guitar work and an atmosphere that really breathes.
While it’s not always the easiest of listens, the raw emotional honesty and potency of her arrangements makes it truly a pleasure to have Leslie Feist back.
While there's no viral hit like "1234" on Pleasure, Feist exhibits some of her best work with just her vocals and a guitar.
The quiet/loud dynamics of Pleasure showcase an artist who’s satiating her capricious appetite, all while keeping her listeners guessing with a knowing wink.
Feist has made her sex-and-death record, and in turn she has created her boldest statement yet. It's messy, confusing, thrilling, and of course, filled with pleasure.
Pleasure is a mature, unseeking artistic statement, uninterested in fitting into anyone else’s formula.
On Leslie Feist’s fifth album, sparks of rock’n’roll are balanced with simmering introspection across a collection of patient, lushly arranged songs.
Pleasure fully embraces the melancholic sentiments of blues and improvisational immediacy of jazz. Written in the wake of a breakup, the songs here brim with both newfound freedom and heartache.
Pleasure, her first LP in six years, trades the sweater-wearing kitchen-jam vibe of her breakthrough The Reminder for a stark intimacy that can suggest Kate & Anna McGarrigle if they'd been big fans of the Young Marble Giants' post-punk bedroom mumblings or PJ Harvey's blues-wrath epistle To Bring You My Love.
Songs seldom end with any intent but instead simply stop, often mid-phrase, beautifully acrobatic melodies that Feist would once have exalted are here soured by obfuscatory sound effects, and the album’s lurching structure, exciting at first, becomes disorientating over the long haul.
Whereas before Feist was able to harness her dynamic voice and her instinct for melody to create understated-yet-memorable records, this album feels like a collection of unfinished sketches.
Unfortunately, there’s not much pleasure here for the listener, manoeuvred into the position of reluctant psychoanalyst.
The pleasures that Pleasure describes are mundane to the point of tedium, trite beyond cliché. And the music itself is, despite the strength of Feist’s voice, mostly intolerable.
This album sounds like it was performed live in a giant greenhouse with people moving around them to water the flowers as they play, and I mean that in the best way. It contains some of Feist's highest highs, yet some might see this as a "quieter" release of her's. It is definitely more reserved than The Reminder, but Pleasure sounds much more personal to Feist herself. It's mature, well-prepared, and not lazy in the slightest. My favorite tracks on here will definitely become some of ... read more
i've been listening to variety of albums these days. such a productive mood. haha. lovely lovely.
faves:
• a man is not his song
• baby be simple
• young up
Canadian classic lol. I love the lofi and messy approach to this album while playing around with melody. One of my favorite daily albums to float too
1 | Pleasure 4:45 | 95 |
2 | I Wish I Didn’t Miss You 4:18 | 88 |
3 | Get Not High, Get Not Low 4:57 | 90 |
4 | Lost Dreams 5:18 | 90 |
5 | Any Party 5:22 | 87 |
6 | A Man Is Not His Song 4:41 | 82 |
7 | The Wind 4:35 | 92 |
8 | Century 5:53 | 86 |
9 | Baby Be Simple 6:21 | 81 |
10 | I'm Not Running Away 3:24 | 86 |
11 | Young Up 3:54 | 80 |
#7 | / | Drowned in Sound |
#8 | / | BrooklynVegan |
#10 | / | The Ringer |
#26 | / | Uproxx |
#27 | / | The Skinny |
#30 | / | Under the Radar |
#39 | / | The Needle Drop |
#40 | / | Stereogum |
#42 | / | SPIN |
#65 | / | Noisey |