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Feist: Tiny Desk Concert

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 Rose Droll is a terrific solo singer-songwriter, drummer Andrew Barr plays in The Slip and The Barr Brothers, bassist Todd Dahlhoff often plays and records with Devendra Banhart and Meshell Ndegeocello, and multi-instrumentalist Amir Yaghmai is a member of The Voidz. Together, though, they sound like one impeccable organism, with Feist herself as its bold, unfailingly kind beating heart.

SET LIST

  • “In Lightning”
  • “Caught a Long Wind”
  • “Hiding Out in the Open”
  • “The Bad in Each Other”

MUSICIANS

  • Leslie Feist: lead vocals, guitar
  • Amir Yaghmai: violin, guitar, vocals
  • Todd Dahlhoff: bass, vocals, musical direction
  • Andrew Barr: drums
  • Rose Droll: keys, piano, vocals 

TINY DESK TEAM

  • Producer: Stephen Thompson 
  • Director: Joshua Bryant 
  • Audio Technical Director: Neil Tevault
  • Editor: Kara Frame
  • Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
  • Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame, Zayrha Rodriguez 
  • Audio Engineer: Hannah Gluvna
  • Production Assistant: Ashley Pointer 
  • Photographer: Michael Zamora 
  • Tiny Desk Team: Hazel Cills, Maia Stern 
  • Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
  • Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
  • VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

Copyright 2024 NPR

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)