Metals (2011)

Metals is the fourth studio album by the Canadian singer-songwriter Feist. It was released on September 30, 2011, in Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and Belgium; October 3, 2011 in the United Kingdom; and October 4, 2011, in the United States and Canada. The first single from the album is "How Come You Never Go There", which was released on August 12, 2011. The album was supported by a world tour which started in Amsterdam, Netherlands on October 15, 2011, and finished on October 20, 2012, in Latin America.

Metals debuted on the US Billboard 200 at number 7, and sold 38,000 copies in its first week. It earned Feist's best sales week and it was her first top 10 album to chart in the US. The album received acclaim from critics. It won the 2012 Polaris Music Prize, an award for the best Canadian album of the year.

Promotion

Promotion for the album began with short videos which feature snippets of tracks and the making of the album. They were posted on her website and other social networking sites since July 21, 2011. Four days after, she officially announced the release of Metals. Artwork for the album was revealed on August 2, 2011; previously, fans were given the opportunity to select the color design for the album cover on Facebook.

Writing and recording

After touring for her previous album, The Reminder, Feist was "emotionally deaf". She stopped playing music for two years, saying that she "wasn't curious anymore". In 2010, she went to the studio in Paris where she had recorded The Reminder. After coming back from Paris six months later, she wrote most of the album. For recording Metals, Feist went to Big Sur with the lyrics almost completed and set up an ad hoc recording studio. Metals was recorded in Toronto and Big Sur, with collaborators including Chilly Gonzales, Mocky, Brian LeBarton, Dean Stone, and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson. They began recording the album in January 2011. She said of the recording process that "I allowed for mistakes more than I ever have, which end up not being mistakes when you open things up and make room for them."

The album's title was partially inspired by Charles C. Mann's non-fiction book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, where it describes the Aztecs' and conquistadors' differing ideas about precious metals such as gold.

Composition

For the album, Feist aimed for a sound she described as "modern ancient", mixing old and new instruments. She stated that the album had "more chaos and movement and noise than I've had before." The music of Metals is influenced by genres such as jazz and the blues, and contains elements of folk. The lyrics of Metals contain a lot of "nature imagery", as Feist was fascinated by the weather since "it makes you feel so minute." They also contemplate topics such as dying love, mortality and solitude. She also pointed to "Sealion" from The Reminder and said that it "grandfathered some of the concepts in Metals". There are many minor chords and open fifths on Metals, as well as a lot of voices sung in unison. The songs "How Come You Never Go There" and "Anti-Pioneer" are ballads, the latter she had worked on for ten years.

Reception

Metals debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, selling about 38,000 copies. It was Feist's best ever sales week, and was her first appearance on the top 10 of the Billboard 200. At Metacritic, a website which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received a score of 81, based on 39 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Spin gave "Metals" a score of 7/10, writing "Taken individually, each song is as sturdy as oak -- the guitars have a magnesium shimmer, and every instrument seems bathed in its own spotlight, especially Feist's vocals, which feel like they're being whispered directly into your ear." In a positive review, Lindsay Zoladz of Pitchfork Media gave the album a 7.7 out of 10. She noted that there was no "1234" on the album, which is the reason that "it feels like such a refreshing and slyly badass statement of artistic integrity" and also that "it doesn't reach The Reminder's heights." Andrew Leahey of AllMusic wrote that "Feist's days as a provider of hip, trendy TV jingles may be over", and that "Metals does its best work at a slower speed".

Elysa Gardner of USA Today gave the album 2.5 stars out of 4, and named "The Bad in Each Other" and "Caught a Long Wind" as the highlights of the album. A mixed review from Slant Magazine criticized most of the album for not having a "real spark to it" and stated that "Metals is too dull for [Feist] to overcome".

The album has received a number of accolades. The New York Times and The Globe and Mail named Metals as the best album of 2011. Uncut and Paste named it the 17th and 29th best album of 2011, respectively. Q named it the 29th best album of 2011. Feist was nominated for Best International Female Artist at the 2012 BRIT Awards for Metals.