"As it's bedrock, there remains that voice: an instrument whose arcs, swoops, cracks and surges hint at the heartache, but whose essential reserve is, ironically, its most potent weapon." LONDON SUNDAY TIMES JAN '05

Like the outlines of a coloring book before it's colored, these songs leave you space to fill in the emotional blanks. Its lack of complication makes Let It Die standout from much of today's musical offerings; put simply, a beautiful slice of sonic escapism to illustrate and interrupt the little moments between the dramas.

In the early 90's, from 15 to 20, Feist played in a pre-grunge/punk band, Placebo, whose first gig was secured by winning a series of battle of the bands contests, the prize being a festival slot alongside the Ramones. At 20 she moved to Toronto and joined the fist-raising sing-along rock band By Divine Right as rhythm guitarist. She also released a solo album, 1999's Monarch , which heralded Let It Die's stripped down, multi-genre soundscapes. Later she shared a house, the "701," with Taylor Savvy (her anarchist free school folk choir director,) and electro-anarchist Peaches, and appeared on stage at Peaches' shows as Bitch Lap-Lap, the incompetent rapper wearing Cuban aerobics outfits, sporting a sock puppet. Putting Lap Lap to rest (in a hammock somewhere), she toured through Europe for 2 years with Chilly Gonzales and is a founding member of Broken Social Scene.

"It was touring with Gonzales and watching him (in one of his many incarnations) improvising on old ragtime tunes on piano that captivated her. 'I would watch the faces in the audience,' she recalls, 'turned up to him in the light, and they would be transformed into 6 year olds. I was one of them, too. In soundchecks, I would always be leaning up against the piano, pretending to be the dame in the long dress." SUNDAY TIMES (UK) JAN '05

"In the meantime of all the playing and touring I had my 4-track permanently glued to my desk, or a dictaphone in my hand, and I was making reels and reels of recordings and lighting sparks and trying to think of where they might belong...I'd be in all these far reaches of the planet (with Gonzales) and someone would say to me 'oh what do you do on your own?' and I'd never have a clear answer for them or anything to give them. By that point I didn't want to give them Monarch , because it had nothing to do with what I was making at home anymore." NATIONAL POST MAY '04 "These recordings, dubbed 'The Red Demos,' were sparked by the notion of 'simple beauty' - that 'if you can hum a song in the shower then it can hold it's own weight.' Barely there versions of songs (featuring Pete Elkas, Matt Murphy and members of Sloan, Chris Murphy and Andrew Scott) that whispered Toronto, down to the Queen Street streetcar clanking in the background." NOW MAGAZINE JUNE '04

In Paris, on odd weeks off during touring, over the winter of '02/'03, Feist and Gonzales began recording some of the songs from these home recordings with Renaud Letang (Manu Chao) at the low-key but quietly famous Studios Ferber. "Playing together as much as we had, I had an invincible trust in him as a player and a producer. It was just a matter of knowing each other's pace and when a pause is pause and when a pause is a cue for help." Switching the focus of their collaboration from Gonzales=stage to Feist=studio naturally led to co-writing. "We started to call it Brilling. We turned the Brill Building into a verb; to go back in time, the analogy we kept using (while I sang into the end of a broom) was that we were going to strip these melodies of their jeans and tee-shirts, dress them up in different clothes to see what looked good on them." SUNDAY TIMES (Canada) JAN '05

A total of 3 of these sessions, 13 days over 4 months, make up Let It Die ...

So, her Canadian indie rock pedigree and touring history in mind, who wouldn't assume the disc could only be made a Paris? "I should probably just go with it and say, 'yes, isn't it romantic?'" she laughs. "But the truth is we'd just come here in between tours to use the studio (offered to them, with his services as co-producer, by Renaud Letang). So this record was equally made in trains, planes, waiting rooms and hotel rooms. It sounds homeless to me, because I was in limbo for 16 months, couch surfing between tours." NOW MAGAZINE JUNE '04

Of the sequencing, which places the originals in the first half, she says 'It's like a time line.' "Mushaboom, her genre defying album's definitive pop anthem..." NEW YORK TIMES JULY '05 "...is the fresh genesis of the love, where you have unwavering belief and hope. "Inside and Out" is the moment before the end when the thought first enters your mind that it could be over. "Now at Last" is knowing but not believing, when you're bittersweet and feeling a little noble about the end. Everybody's got that range within them. They're crying on the bathroom floor after some horrible news, 20 minutes later they dust themselves off to go meet a friend, and then at 3 am, they're dancing and trying to get over whatever the crying was about." NATIONAL POST MAY '04

"Gatekeeper" and "Now At Last" gloriously bookend this opus, with their personal and introspective fragility, while first single "Mushaboom" captures the spirit of our lives in cities when we wake up dreaming of living somewhere quiet. Its layered and homemade backdrop of guitars and percussion is straight out of a campfire out back of an old time music hall and has within it a powerful and overwhelming sense of hope and anticipation. "The guitars, horns, hand claps and swirling studio wizardry are only there to complement the central focus, a voice of remarkable discipline, never more or less than is absolutely required." NATIONAL POST MAY '04 "...which was like, some pans and some crickets living underneath the couch," Feist admits. TORONTO STAR JUNE '04.

"When I Was A Young Girl" is tribal, chilling and relentlessly beautiful, with Feist's voice running roughshod over the Badalamenti-esque backdrop. This is surely the sort of track that would probably see Messrs Lynch and Stone fighting to the death for a slot in their latest cinematic score. '"Secret Heart" and "One Evening" are both foot tappers, telling stories about either end of the love affair, whilst "Inside and Out" finds Feist uncharacteristically covering a Bee Gees classic. As a dance song, it's grandiose and magnificent and unlike anything else you'll hear this year. It's a dramatic twist, but it slots perfectly amongst the soothing silences and crackled emotion of the quieter side to this record. "Lyrically, Feist's vocabulary is saturated by jazz and pop standards, sometimes making her songs into signifiers that point to meanings rather than embodying them." GLOBE & MAIL JUNE '04 " Tout Doucement" is like a 1920's waltz with the lover you can laugh with- seductive, curious and truly unique. First understood as "to do some more" on Canadian national public radio when Feist heard the Blossom Dearie version on a break between recording sessions.

In recent collaborations she can be found co-writing and singing with the Kings Of Convenience on their latest album Riot On An Empty Street , singing a duet with Mocky on his album Are and Be , and has written a duet to be sung with Jane Birkin for her newest release Rendezvous . Feist is also featured on Arts&Crafts labelmate Apostle of Hustle's opus Folkloric Feel and is on both Broken Social Scene albums, the newest of which was released Oct. '05.

So there you have it... Let It Die and Feist - The breakup and the makeup. This is an album that will follow you easily from the bath to the bar and soundtrack your mood for both. This is an album that seems to reach nostalgically to a time when singers crossed all styles whether they were old fashioned or in fashion. This is shared privacy and strangely it's your own life you're looking at.

"I've always imagined there's a windshield and there's a rearview mirror... and the windshield is so much bigger than the mirror. I'm heading forward." POLLSTAR AUG '05