Feist, “One Evening”

by Alexandra Molotkow

Toronto is a strange city (nothing about Toronto is remotely strange) because it has a serious booster culture while at the same time a total distrust of anything of itself. Around the early aughts, a lot of ummmm not technically proficient bands were playing around town, while bands like Broken Social Scene were just, phwoosh! Getting huge. Someone from Toronto is going to be mad at me for saying this about [Name Redacted Are You Kidding Everyone In Toronto Is Best Friends] but let’s just say Leslie Feist is better. I didn’t feel that way at the time.

I disliked Feist because I thought she stood for the least interesting, most bath-bead-ish elements of our quiet little city, while children screeching over drum machines was better. I thought hers was dentist office music, which was so stupid for two reasons: a) dentist office music is the best music and b) dentist offices play classical music, not dentist office music. Also, Let It Die was part of a wave of musical triumphs that made Toronto self-conscious overnight. And that was a really awkward time for the city as a whole, newly aware that it might be cool, but not even a little bit cool. It got pretty excruciating.

I guess I blamed Feist or something; what a dummy I was. And this is just to say that I like Feist now. I always liked Feist but now I just really, really like Feist. Or like, at least three songs by Feist. Who am I kidding? I have listened to this one on repeat for years.