You know what I love about slow news days like today? They give me a break from writing about stupid, slutty famewhores and lets me branch out and actually write about people I like. Anyway, in order to promote her new album Metals (which I picked up on Tuesday and is absolutely amazing) Feist talked to Pitchfork about the creative process behind the album, as well as the year-long break from performing she took after the massive worldwide success of The Reminder:
But when I stopped touring, it was like trying to stop a bullet train or a giant lead ball falling from a 100 stories up– it’s momentum and it doesn’t just stop. I drew a line in the calendar and made it a brick wall and just stopped dead. There was no other way. It would’ve taken another 100 years to slow down slowly. I had to let myself imagine a calendar with no lines; when every single day is being predetermined six months in advance, there’s no more fluidity to time.
So I said I’d stop for a year, which was inconceivable to me and everyone around me. It seemed like so long. But then, after that year, I looked up and I still hadn’t gotten my land legs back at all. I needed another year. By then, everyone had calmed and receded back into the wallpaper. I was in a crazy, private, awesome bubble again, and that’s when I started to write.
I went back to the studio in Paris where we recorded The Reminder to write the beginnings of my ideas last summer, came back, and wrote the album in the fall. In about four months, I went from zero to finished. It usually takes forever. I don’t think the label even knew that I was making a record until we said, “OK, we’re recording next week.” It was like in a movie where everyone freezes and one character is still moving, and then I pressed un-pause and everyone came back to life and I threw an album at them.
I get why she would take a year off after the sudden rush of success: I’m sure it’s weird to go from under the radar indie darling to being in high demand from the mainstream. Although I am happy to have her back, because Metals is an amazing album, incredibly beautiful and complex.
