Feist: Tiny Desk Concert

Stephen Thompson | July 24, 2024 There’s always been a disconnect between Leslie Feist’s music — soothing, thoughtful, deliberately crafted — and her warm, wryly funny personality. We got to witness both in her long-awaited Tiny Desk debut, which finds her showcasing new and old material amid self-effacing commentary on the pandemic, public speaking and her strange moment of reality-TV fame. “The great joke that will always remain about [her song ‘Hiding Out in the Open’] is that we ended up singing it to contestants on The Bachelor — where true love rules all, of course,” Feist said between songs. “So singing truisms about eternal love to youth on a game show changed the context forever.” Performing two songs from last year’s wonderful Multitudes (“In Lightning” and “Hiding Out in the Open”) and two songs from 2011’s Metals (“Caught a Long Wind” and “The Bad in Each Other”), Feist was joined by a group of players and singers who’ve each performed notable work in their own right: Keyboardist