Review: Feist's dark Pleasure makes for a unlikely party at Bella Concert Hall

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“Just for my sake, can we pretend we’re at the Republik in 1995?” Leslie Feist asked the rapt audience at the Bella Concert Hall Wednesday evening, during the first of three sold-out shows at the beautiful and relatively new venue at Mount Royal University.

It was not just a shoutout to those who may actually remember Feist’s pre-fame adventures in punk at the iconic and now-defunct Calgary nightclub. After the singer-songwriter kicked things off with the title track of her fifth studio album, Pleasure, she pointed out that the venue seemed “polite” and then politely asked if the audience could make it less so.

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She urged people to sing, to dance, even to heckle. In short, there was a concerted effort by the singer  to make her stunning return to Calgary much more of a party than one might expect from a tour supporting what is undoubtably her darkest record to date. Of course, the venue does indeed look polite. Feist, dressed in a bright pink evening gown, was surrounded by a three-piece band of slightly dour-looking dudes in black. The stage design was smoky and elegant and atmospheric.

When I attempted to enter the venue through a side door before the show, an usher politely redirected me to the main entrance so I could enjoy an “enhanced” experience, which involved passing through an archway tastefully decorated with flowers to partially replicate Pleasure’s trippy album art.

Pleasure is not really a polite record, of course. But it’s not a party record either. It’s stark, introspective and occasionally despairing. Feist was nevertheless keen to immerse us in the album, playing all 11 songs  in sequence for the first half of the show and offering vague snippets of insight into the album’s narrative. 

But with its dark flashes of rock ‘n’ roll and haunting melodies, Pleasure actually translates remarkably well to the stage. That much was clear from the get-go, with Feist slashing through the melancholy of the title track with the shards of electric guitar. The delicate Lost Dreams was mesmerizing, as was the gorgeous outro of The Wind, which found Feist’s fragile vocals glide atop a swelling keys. Century was an early highlight, with the singer’s anguished howls breaking through a grungy guitar rave-up, while the slightly rosier Any Party became a unlikely early sing-a-long.

It all offered a nice reminder that while Pleasure may seem an insular record, there’s no denying its creator is a consummate entertainer. She bounced around with a tambourine on Young Up, generated some real heat trading riffs with her violinist for a ragged run through My Moon My Man and turned Sealion into a tent-shaking revival number. She also playfully called out her mom (there was apparently a large contingent of Feist’s family on hand for these homecoming shows), led the audience in a  haphazard round of Happy Birthday for her guitar tech and gently admonished us all for sitting down. She even invited members of the audience to “slow dance” on stage during a shimmering take on her haunting 2004 song Let It Die. Granted, the result seemed less like a high-school dance and more like those odd nightclub scenes that ended episodes of the new Twin Peaks.

But it was all there on Wednesday night, with Feist playing artist and entertainer and homecoming queen. She offered some sly insight into this hybrid during the final encore, suggesting she had a strained relationship with her biggest hit, 1 2 3 4. Ten years ago, the song helped usher in her reign as a Grammy and Juno-winning pop star, albeit a reluctant one. Standing alone on the stage, she transformed the quirky pop hit into a torchy acoustic number, at least at first. By the time her backup band joined in and fully returned it to its more recognizable form, Feist had bounced backwards off the stage and into the wings. Don’t worry Calgary, she’ll be back tomorrow.