FEIST

The Reminder

(Cherrytree/Interscope)

Three years ago, Leslie Feist ambled up to you in confidence, whispering in your ear sweet nothings from Let It Die. The album's whispery baroque pop highlighted her intoxicating, feathery voice. Even when she covered the Bee Gees disco chestnut "Inside and Out," she sounded exotic and alluring, like private talk between a couple just before they kiss.

Now everyone's in on the secret. Feist's The Reminder arrives with a big Interscope-sponsored promotions campaign, a New York Times article calls her "pop's new one-name wonder," and enterprising electro-house-dance-rock-whatever DJs remix her first single, "My Moon My Man," making her an omnipresent gale in your local indie nightclub. She may be just as enchanting, but the effect is not the same. Now, loving her is awkward, sort of like kissing in public.

But don't blame Feist for being popular. She still makes the smart, sassy songs you love. On "So Sorry," she croons softly, her Canadian cadence rendering the words piercingly direct. "I'm sorry/Two words I always think/After you're gone/When I realize I was acting all wrong," she lilts lovingly. She indulges her wry, jazzlike syncopation on several tracks, most memorably on "Intuition."

Blessed with a uniquely crisp and reedy voice, Feist truly sounds like no other. Sometimes she stretches her instrument to the limit, producing an uncomfortably high yelp on "The Park." But mostly, with the help of producer Jason "Gonzales" Beck, she makes a joyful noise. On "Sea Lion Woman," she greets you with hand claps. At one point she effuses brightly, "I feel it all."

No longer merely an indie queen who moonlights with Peaches and Broken Social Scene for fun, Feist produces adult contemporary that rivals Aimee Mann in existential longing and personal insight. That's okay. You have to admit that the appropriately named The Reminder indicates the girl may have grown, but still sounds wonderful. If only you and she could get away from all these damn people. MOSI REEVES

ADULT.

Why Bother?

(Thrill Jockey)

1/2

Why bother, indeed? With every album release since 2001's alienated electro masterpiece Resuscitation, Adult. have steadily slipped. That retooled collection of previously released singles was strangely more satisfying as a whole record than anything they've released since—a hermetically sealed universe of sterile interactions, clinical environments, and damaged people, as well as a wildly inventive post-techno Detroit of salvaged drum machines and deconstructed synth arpeggios centered around vocalist/graphic artist Nicola Kuperus's apathetic, vocoded monotone.

XThen things started to devolve.

Most noticeably, Kuperus has gradually abandoned the dispassionate vocoder in favor of exaggerating Siouxsie Sioux's gothic wail, and partner Adam Lee Miller has replaced the cold, clean production of their early work with skuzzy ring-modulated distortions and clanging reverb. Neither is a particularly good look.

Perhaps more damning, though, is the inconsistency of their songwriting. Granted, Resuscitation was a singles collection, but no other proper album of theirs has had anywhere near as many solid songs (Anxiety Always came closest), and Why Bother? is yet another middling album punctuated by few great tracks. "Plagued by Fear" stands out, although its heavily phased bass sounds like a recycling of Gimme Trouble's "In My Nerves." "You Don't Worry Enough" is a dark punk descent, and "I Should Care" is a catchy enough anti-cheerleader chant (with Kuperus as evil Toni Basil). But none of these tracks is going to lodge in your head the way the band's classics do. Elsewhere, the album indulges in disposable "spooky" instrumental passages such as "The Importance of Being Folk" (Parts I and II), the brief "The Mythology of Psychosis," and "Harvest."

Apparently, Adult. aren't fucking around with all the antisocial ranting; they'd prefer to be the only ones at their party. Why Bother? is another forceful invitation to leave them alone. ERIC GRANDY

Adult. play with Erase Errata, Parts & Labor, and DJ Porq at Chop Suey Sat April 28, 9pm, $10 adv, 21+.

YACHT

I Believe in You. Your Magic Is Real.

(Marriage Records)

1/2

So this is the new sincerity. YACHT, known to his mom as Jona Bechtolt, is a poster child for the post-irony generation, a true believer in magical realism and positive mental attitude. "If you say it out loud, you can make it happen," sings Bechtolt on "Platinum," and "You can have the world for yourself... the magic inside of you is infinite" on "I Believe in You." The promo CD even came with a magic wand.

It's almost saccharine sweetness, but Bechtolt balances his wide-eyed lyrical smile with a musical repertoire of twitchy grimaces. As the instrumental foil for the Blow's coy R&B mash-notes, Bechtolt fashions biodiesel trunk rattlers, but with his own songs he gets a little more adventurous and even esoteric.

"So Post All 'Em" is a swirling pastoral of acoustic guitar and hand drumming. "We're Always Waiting" is a sub-boardwalk carnival ride. "Platinum" bites the bubbling filtered bass line of LCD Soundsystem's "Get Innocuous!" and adds spectral disco vamps, and "Drawing in the Dark" begins as a falsetto a cappella before devolving into suburban chop and screw.

Bechtolt's live act has a kind of spastic talent-show energy that's carried onto his recordings by way of hyped up—and hyper—vocals. When Eats Tapes lend their lo-fi acid stomp to "It's All the Same Price," Bechtolt introduces them with enthusiastic charm ("Ladies and gentlemen, Eats Tapes"). "Your Magic Is Real" is a sort of Daft Punk's "Teachers" meets Le Tigre's "Hot Topic," with Bechtolt excitedly shouting out "thank you" over a track that gradually builds from looped acoustics and chanting to freaked electronics and ascendant vocals.

And while all the positivity and childlike wonder can be a bit much at times, it's ultimately endearing. I Believe in You is a less than perfect record—Bechtolt's lyrics are silly, and he lets the glue and scraps show on his sonic cut and paste—but that's hardly the point. YACHT is all about creative encouragement and As for effort, and on those terms his magic is real enough. ERIC GRANDY

YACHT plays at Chop Suey Thurs April 26, 9 pm, $6 before 10:30 pm/$8 after, 18+.

BRIGHT EYES

Cassadaga

(Saddle Creek)

Every writer needs an editor, and Conor Oberst is no exception. Cassadaga is, in the greatest and most overwhelming sense, the product of a nimble, ambitious intellect let free to roam. As Bright Eyes' auteur, Oberst has never had a shortage of inspiration; his ear as a songwriter has always yielded music of understated elegance. But with the second mention of Babylon in three songs and the third grandiose Biblical image before the album's halfway mark, the weight of his references diminishes with their overuse. String sections, steel guitar, backing choirs, samples, electronic interference—layer upon layer of sonic diffusion—collude with Oberst's unbridled vision and leave the listener dizzy and fatigued. Imagine a 13-song album full of "A Day in the Life."

Too much of a good thing is still too much. On their own, songs like "Four Winds" and "Classic Cars" are brilliantly paced, hook-heavy nuggets of alt-Americana, swaddled eloquently in all the sonic trimmings; "Four Winds" also sinks under a line about "the whore of Babylon." "If the Brakeman Turns My Way" is a certified masterpiece, the kind of Oberst song that sets his name on pedestals alongside Dylan and Springsteen, personal and universal, profound in its poetic simplicity. Some mellow rest would throw its potency into sharper relief. Instead, the blue-eyed ballad "Make a Plan to Love Me" is gilded in too many strings and angelic backing vocals. It's the same syndrome with Blood on the Tracks—though it has "Tangled Up in Blue," it'll never be considered Dylan's best.

Most of all, in its eclectic, downtrodden Americana, Cassadaga brings to mind Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in a sort of photonegative sense. That album's pharmaceutically blasted airiness is the opposite of Oberst's pressured, sumptuous arrangements. Jeff Tweedy had producer Jim O'Rourke to pull in the reins on those sessions; perhaps Oberst's longtime friend and associate Mike Mogis was too accommodating. Cassadaga is possibly a similar grower of an album; fully submerging into its depths will prove more difficult. JONATHAN ZWICKEL

Bright Eyes play Tues May 1 at the Paramount, 7:30 pm, $25–$29.50, all ages.

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