It was Leslie Feist's third stop to D.C. in the last four months. After playing with Broken Social Scene at the 9:30 club, she was an opening act for Bright Eyes at Constitution Hall and finally sold out the Black Cat as a headliner Wednesday night. But even those who've had her solo debut "Let it Die" on repeat have only been barely introduced to Feist.
Truth be told, she's a complete human being on stage, not content to revel in a venue but to sell herself as the venue and back it up with immense charisma and energy. Maybe that's why she markets herself as "Feist" and not Leslie Feist. Perhaps the songs aren't supposed to be just about the person who wrote them, but about the place where they took her and where they're still taking her. Let's face it, so many of the acts she's shared the stage with have either covered her (Bright Eyes) or count her as a contributor (Broken Social Scene, Kings of Convenience). Something like that makes you bigger than a singer-songwriter and closer to an institution.
The same proved true on Wednesday night. While opener and fellow Broken Social Scene alumnus Jason Collette was onstage, mugging like Bob Dylan, Feist jumped in for two numbers, spurning his musical advances with a tambourine on a duet, and backing Collette's band on drums for a separate song.
Opening on her own, Feist started her set on her now trademark four track auxiliary mike, layering and repeating her already massive voice three times while singing over each pitch on "When I Was a Young Girl." Blossoming slowly, singing intently, and playing guitar ferociously, her huge pop vocals expand and swirl naturally, even with the added technology and a seasoned backing band in tow.
Feist was a punk rocker once and it shows, with her set putting more electric guitar on stage than her records. Just seeing her head thrashing about brings up close comparisons to the trademark Ramones mop-top with a 1980s Madonna aura. But the emphasis on Stan Getz-style jazz and Euro folk/pop still persevered as the bread and butter on "One Evening" and the cover of "Inside & Out" by the Bee Gees. After that, her big song, "Mushaboom," didn't seem built as a highlight, but a natural progression, while Ron Sexsmith's "Secret Heart" rocked harder than its source material had any right to.
It did, in earnest, end where it began, with the title track to "Let it Die," and a somber explanation to it. She asked the audience to put one more image in their head before they went, one of non-cynical love, summoning back a time when she could just dream of writing romantic music that could mean something to anyone. She invited a couple onstage to waltz in the background, and they did so quite gracefully.
This long swing for Feist has had an unmistakable innocence about it that her listeners probably will never get back to. She'll get bigger and her fans will pay more to see how it turns out; that's always been the nature of the business. But while they do, they'll remember the night Leslie Feist let us dance close and how touched she seemed that we would let her.
