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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
In 2001, the Canadian musician Leslie Feist was twenty-five years old, couch-surfing in Berlin, and occasionally performing with two musicians from Toronto: Peaches (born Merrill Nisker), an electronic-music artist given to profane lyrics, and Gonzales (born Jason Beck), a multi-instrumentalist. As Peaches, dressed in a pink mesh top and hot pants, barked terse, hammering songs like "Fuck the Pain Away," Feist would stand behind her, wearing a leotard and manipulating a sock puppet. (Her stage name then was Bitch Lap Lap; she now performs as simply Feist.) When Gonzales released an album called "Presidential Suite," Feist accompanied him on tour around Europe. At the end of each show, Gonzales posed for photographs with audience members while holding a placard bearing the name of the city in which he was performing. Later, Feist explained that she and Gonzales made the placards before each show, using a "font that we felt expressed the city's character."
When not helping her friends, Feist, who had spent her teen-age years in a Calgary punk band singing so hard that she damaged her vocal cords, was recording songs of her own. The material bore little relation to Gonzales's musical stunts, and it did not sound much like the noisy, epic songs she had been playing in Toronto as a member of the large indie-rock band Broken Social Scene. Feist's new songs were quiet and careful, with no trace of confrontation. Her voice...
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