Feist - Metal

01. The Bad in Each Other
02. Graveyard
03. Caught a Long Wind
04. How Come You Never Go There
05. A Commotion
06. Bittersweet Melodies
07. Anti-Pioneer
08. The Undiscovered First
09. Cicadas and Gulls
10. Woe Be
11. Comfort Me
12. Get It Wrong Get It Right

Anyone who didn't buy Feist's breakthrough album, 2007's The Reminder, might be forgiven for mistaking this Canadian chanteuse for a winsome girl touting iPod nanos. Those who did buy it have been waiting four long years for a follow-up. Announced through a series of nicely shot online teasers , Metals finds Feist embracing her inner geologist, mining the elements – fractured relationships, hard-won wisdom, the natural landscape – for their intrinsic worth. Standouts include "Undiscovered First", which reveals a thus-far-hidden kinship with PJ Harvey, and "Comfort Me", a stomp with a lyrical sting in its tail. Other fairy godmothers including Kate Bush and Carole King hover over the track-listing, but never in a heavy-handed way – Feist remains her own woman. A deceptively easy-going single, "How Come You Never Go There", is due on 25 September, while Feist's first UK gig in three years, at London's Palladium on 17 October, sold out in just three hours.

She says: "There's the way you feel versus the way you wish you felt. The raw material and what our minds turn it into are completely different states."...www.guardian.co.uk