Behold the power of Broken Social Scene (and constant touring). When Feist made her first stop in town last May she played to a half-full room at the Black Cat opening for British Sea Power. A few more stops through town in ’05 and a mere eight months later she is headlining the Cat and sold it out to boot.
The crowd inside was a mix of hipsters and um…people that don’t go to many concerts. At one point during the show Feist asked the crowd the last concert they had seen. There were shouts of Colin Meloy, Low and some other examples of indie rock royalty, and then someone shouted out “PJ Harvey!” Seriously? If this is the show that person is talking about, they need to get out more.
But hey, if you’re only going to go to a show every 24 months, you could do a lot worse than taking in the lovely Leslie Feist. She sang much of Let It Die solo; “One Evening,” a psuedo R&B cut on record, was transformed by a sparse guitar arrangement with the audience, dubbed the “DC Glee Club,” singing the song’s melody. On “Secret Heart” her band kicked in after the first verse, allowing both the singer and the crowd to rock out and let their collective hair down a bit. Her band left their instruments to sing the backup vocals on the Bee Gees cover “Inside & Out,” and you could have sworn you were in church listening to a hymn. Much like Ryan Adams and “Wonderwall,” Feist owns this song now.