Five minutes into her set, Leslie Feist is in attack mode. “Pleasure, it’s my pleasure,” she rasps, as if her pleasure would be to rip a few heads off. A burst of shredding follows, her fingers tearing along her guitar’s fretboard. Grinding out the song’s last words – “It’s my pleasure and your pleasure, that’s what we’re here for!” – she is quivering. This is music made to engulf the senses – the only question is, with another 90 minutes to go, how will she top it?
The opening blitz turns out to be one of many such moments, as she performs current album Pleasure in its entirety. Subjecting an audience to an hour of relatively new songs isn’t generally considered cricket, but the Canadian songwriter can afford to indulge herself. It’s her first record in six years, and the crowd are on their feet from the first note.
Pleasure was made during a rough patch in her life: a relationship went sour, exacerbating depression and anxiety that were in part caused by an unsought spell of pop stardom, generated by the success of the 2007 single 1234. Heard on headphones (and her merch store offers a pair equipped with “plush vegan leather earpads” as part of a £160 Deluxe Package of the album), Pleasure is the sparsest of her five albums, seemingly designed to see off anyone still hoping she might one day recreate 1234’s uncharacteristic bubbliness. Brought to flaming life on stage with her band, Pleasure’s bare-bones peaks and valleys become splenetic blues-rock and luminous ballads that recall her indie-folk past.
Intermittently, Feist loops her vocals into a silvery choir, transforming Lost Dreams and The Wind into finely wrought showstoppers. The problematic Any Party, which meekly tells her crush-object that she would “leave any party” for him, is redeemed by her violinist’s skill and an audience singalong. During Century, Feist lets tonight’s special guest get on with it. Jarvis Cocker, donnish in crumpled suit jacket and trousers, reprises his cameo appearance on the track: “Century – how long is that?” he whispers (“3,155,973,600 seconds,” apparently).
Once Pleasure is over, Feist fills the rest of the set with old songs and gusto. Young Up has her inviting 15 delighted couples on stage “for a slow dance”; on Sea Lion Woman, she’s a hectoring revivalist preacher. Even 1234 gets an acoustic makeover. Whether it’s pleasurable for her is debatable, but Feist is an original.
• At Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, until 29 July. Box office: 0844-477 2000.
