by Jon Pareles
On the way to the video shoot for a song named “1 2 3 4,” Leslie Feist called her father on her cellphone, urging him to drop by the studio. “I’m going to dance like in ‘Fame,’ ” bubbled Feist, a petite 31-year-old brunette who uses her last name for her solo recording career. “I’m going to be carried around on the shoulders of 50 people, like Madonna in ‘Material Girl,’ only minus the pearls and the back muscles.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. “1 2 3 4,” which appears on her new album, “The Reminder” (Cherry Tree/Interscope), is an easy-swinging tune, almost like a nursery rhyme, that grows into a mass chorus. Tucked into it are lyrics that celebrate the intensity of teenage bonds and feelings: “Money can’t buy you back the love that you had then.” The video clip, to be completed in just two days of rehearsals and one of shooting, would be a big live production number: an uninterrupted, uneditable one-camera take.
Four dozen dancers in color-coordinated thrift-store clothes surrounded Feist, raising her overhead and, at one point, flipping her. The camera swooped around, amid and above them, revealing geometric patterns like a Busby Berkeley sequence. Feist had traded her usual T-shirt and jeans for a flashy blue-sequined pantsuit and pointy golden high heels, which pinched her feet. “It’s not the most pleasant sensation,” she said after dancing in them through take after take. “But it’s for the razzle-dazzle.”
What’s a nice indie-rocker doing in a scene like this? Courting a potential mainstream audience while offering something as substantial as it is catchy.
Read more:
On the way to the video shoot for a song named “1 2 3 4,” Leslie Feist called her father on her cellphone, urging him to drop by the studio. “I’m going to dance like in ‘Fame,’ ” bubbled Feist, a petite 31-year-old brunette who uses her last name for her solo recording career. “I’m going to be carried around on the shoulders of 50 people, like Madonna in ‘Material Girl,’ only minus the pearls and the back muscles.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. “1 2 3 4,” which appears on her new album, “The Reminder” (Cherry Tree/Interscope), is an easy-swinging tune, almost like a nursery rhyme, that grows into a mass chorus. Tucked into it are lyrics that celebrate the intensity of teenage bonds and feelings: “Money can’t buy you back the love that you had then.” The video clip, to be completed in just two days of rehearsals and one of shooting, would be a big live production number: an uninterrupted, uneditable one-camera take.
Four dozen dancers in color-coordinated thrift-store clothes surrounded Feist, raising her overhead and, at one point, flipping her. The camera swooped around, amid and above them, revealing geometric patterns like a Busby Berkeley sequence. Feist had traded her usual T-shirt and jeans for a flashy blue-sequined pantsuit and pointy golden high heels, which pinched her feet. “It’s not the most pleasant sensation,” she said after dancing in them through take after take. “But it’s for the razzle-dazzle.”
What’s a nice indie-rocker doing in a scene like this? Courting a potential mainstream audience while offering something as substantial as it is catchy.
Read more:
