Leslie Feist is scrabbling around on the concrete floor, attempting to bury her jewellery. A circle of respectful audience members look on; the rest of us are watching a live feed of her mimed efforts projected on to the main stage curtain. A man we’re calling “Kyle” – he’s not really called Kyle – is livestreaming the action on an iPhone. Kyle divides his time between tracking the Canadian singer’s movements and wandering about, collecting ambient shots: closeups of fabric patterns, or at Feist’s request, the crowd’s own phone footage of whatever “got them through lockdown”. Mostly, Kyle’s phone films snaps of pets and loved ones. Someone offers up footage of sheep.
This is the tour for this year’s Multitudes album, in which a winsome singer-songwriter – or alternatively, a “hardened rock dog”, “30 years deep” into touring – goes a little rogue (it’s Feist’s last UK date, so spoilers are incoming). This Feist is gleefully toying with preconceptions, mixing everyday chat about grief and emojis with high-concept suspensions of disbelief. It’s a daring and wonderful production – and also hokey and baffling at once. Kyle is supposedly a random audience member that Feist instantly entrusts with her personal space, and her phone. Uh-huh.
