Feist Contains ‘Multitudes’

When Leslie Feist was five-years-old, there was a rule at the dinner table. Her mom laid down the law. No singing during meals! Otherwise, the future four-time Grammy nominee wouldn’t stop humming around the house, so her mom had to institute the dinnertime directive.

Feist’s singing got to be so common that her brother would hide little cassette recorders around their home because she would sing stream-of-consciousness melodies so often. Then he would “torture” her by playing it all back. But her ambition paid off. She started choir when she was six, even going to an elementary school that focused on it. That prepared her for perhaps the most serendipitous moment of her early career. Feist, whose newest album, Multitudes, arrives Friday (April 14), says she began going to punk shows and one day in high school a few girls approached her about it. They’d seen her at the gigs. So, they offered her the chance to sing in their band.