Album Review: Feist, Multitudes

Multitudes, Feist’s sixth album, took shape over the course of 2021 and 2022 during an experimental live show/workshop with 360-degree immersive sound incorporated into the production. This level of audio innovation carried over into the album’s recording, with pristine Dolby Atmos creating a similarly immersive experience, designed by multi-Grammy nominated producer Robbie Lackritz. All very well for the audiophile in your life, but is it any good? The answer is a resounding yes.

Album opener ‘In Lightning’ is something of a red herring, its madcap mayhem not a million miles away from Fiona Apple’s genre-bendingly brilliant 2020 album, Fetch The Bolt Cutters. Of the other 11 songs, only the wall of acoustic sound that is ‘Borrow Trouble’ raises the tempo or the temperature above a whisper. The others stick more to a dreamy, acoustic format that sees the Canadian songstress channelling the spirit of Joni Mitchell – high praise indeed.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the dreamy, folksy ‘Love Who We Are Meant To’; the delicate and delicious ‘The Redwing’; or the uber-catchy ‘Calling All The Gods’. The beautiful ‘Hiding Out In The Open’ brims over with layered, multi-tracked vocals, making it seem as if Feist is duetting with herself, an effect carried to its zenith in ‘Of Womankind’, where we have a chorus of Feists. Very impressive indeed.

Listen: ‘Borrow Trouble’
Score: 8/10

Out now via Fiction.

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