Feist at The Fillmore

This was the best concert I've been to. I made this website so that I could put this review on it so that more people might go experience Feist's genius.

This review contains spoilers. Stop reading now if you're already planning to go see her.

The show begins with a large image of some tape on a floor projected onto the curtain at the back of the stage. A few moments later, we see that it's not just an image. It's a video, and the camera is tilting up to reveal an audience in a concert venue. It's this concert venue. It's this audience! It's a live feed from Feist's iPhone and she's walking through the audience pointing the camera at everyone she passes.

When she reaches me and Gabrielle, I have to shuffle around to get out of her way and she points the camera at my shuffling feet. After reaching the stage, she eases in to an intimate acoustic set. After a couple songs, she hands the still-livestreaming phone to an audience member to do what they please with it. They weave their way through the audience, pointing the camera at excited fans as Feist continues to play on stage.

The set is great. Feist is captivating and charming. She's bantering with some audience members and sharing stories from her life. It's like she's our cool aunt who has invited us into her living room to play checkers and drink tea. I'm delighted to be getting such an intimate and stripped-down experience of her work.

It feels like we might be approaching the end of the show, and I'm totally satisfied. It's been a great set from an artist I've wanted to see for a long time. If the show ended here, it would still be one of my favorites. But then there's a shift in the energy. There's more reverb and echo on her voice. The supposedly-randomly selected cameraperson's camera work is looking more and more professional. He jumps on stage as we continue to watch the live feed projected on the curtain, but something is wrong. He's panning the camera toward the audience but the venue is empty in the feed. There's some skillfully executed special effects work going on and we start to realize that this might not be the casual and off-the-cuff performance that we thought it was.

As the song climaxes, the lights all go red and Feist's effects-heavy a cappella vocals launch into a crescendo that leaves us all breathless. After that, silence. I've got chills. Then - as I'm already thinking that this is one of the best shows I've seen - we hear an instrument other than her guitar for the first time in this supposedly solo-acoustic show. It's a single piano note struck repeatedly. Lights flash on behind the curtain revealing the silhouette of a full band. The drummer breaks in with a kick and snare. The curtain is raised as the band launches in to My Moon My Man and the band is tight.

Feist is playing guitar, singing, and adding to the percussion with a drum stick and snare in the middle of the stage. Partway through the song, she throws the drumstick, without breaking her eye contact with the audience, to the drummer across the stage who catches it perfectly timed for his next hit.

At this point I'm frozen, jaw-dropped, trying to process what I'm seeing. Feist isn't the mild-mannered cool aunt Leslie that she's been pretending to be. She's not playing checkers. She's playing 3D-chess and she's been a grandmaster since before I was born. This show has been LOCKED IN and orchestrated down to the second - down to every "mistake" that made us let our guard down.

I don't have a lot to say about the rest of the show. Don't get me wrong, it was excellent, but that reveal is what really made it for me.

She closed with a performance of Of Womankind featuring a green-screen blanket that she danced through the audience with as more mind-bending live visuals were projected on stage. It was a perfect closer, somehow managing to continue to surprise and captivate us after an incredible show.

Feist if you're reading this, please come back to San Francisco soon!