Feist Feels It All. A lot.

The cover of Feist's second album, The Reminder, shows rainbow lasers beaming from her throat, symbolizing either her colorful singing or that her neck is really gay. Feist (she dropped her first name, Leslie) was the lead singer for the punk band Placebo (but not the more famous band of the same name), sang with indie rock supergroup Broken Social Scene and even collaborated with her ex-roommate, the raunchy electro/punk goddess Peaches. Since the rainbow beams are both behind and in front of her, maybe it's saying that her colorful past informs her colorful music?

OK, so I'm overthinking it, but overthinking seems right up Feists's alley. The lyrics produce a cohesive vision of a self-reflective, independent woman who questions relationships but always acknowledges her own roles and flaws in them. Check out the uptempo, wonderfully complicated "I Feel It All," where Feist starts out chanting phrases like the title, "the wings are wide," "wild card inside," and "I know more than I knew before." It's as if she's psyching herself up to tackle the obstacles in her relationship ("No one likes to take a test"). But the head-boppy, guitar-strumming music is so upbeat, as is her delivery, that it sounds like Feist is ready to take it all on.

Then there's the first single, "1234." Finger snaps, cascading pianos, bright horn sections, a back-up chorus and a banjo all swirl around some of my favorite lyrics on the album. "1234, tell me that you love me more/sleepless long nights that is what my youth was for" - I love it! In other words: "Hi, yeah, I'm not a teenager anymore, so that brooding, too-cool, anti-commitment thing isn't going to work. Be emotionally available or I'm out." While so many pop stars over the age of 25 think they have to get caught up in relationship drama to appear youthful (what's up, Gwen Stefani?), it's refreshing to hear a grown woman write emotionally developed, mature music, especially when she's so gosh-darn cute about them (to see what I mean, watch the video here).

With these gems, why does the album seem so long? Maybe it's because out of thirteen songs, about 8 of them are ballads. Seriously, Feist might be a mature, independent woman, but girl needs some caffeine. The lyrics are indeed insightful. Everyone can relate to "Intuition," which questions how and where one gets their feelings about the relationship they're in, such as when do you work at it? When do you move on? (It ends on the melancholy note: "It's impossible to tell/how important someone was/and what you might have missed out on...Did I miss out on you?" Pass the tissues. And the vodka.) It's lovely, but by the album's finale, these moments bordered on overly-precious.

It's not that the slower songs aren't good, but when more than half the album consists of a girl and her piano - plus some funky extra (but minimal) sounds and a lot of water/mountain metaphors (I'll let you figure that out) - they tend to blur together. Feist seems to get lost in her music, as if in a trance, where her vocals echo and wrap and warp around themselves to create more of an ambiance than a narrative. But when she picks up the pace, as in the haunting, jazzy "My Moon My Man" or the tribal "Sealion," her interpretation of Nina Simone's "See Line Woman," she creates an urgent sexiness without losing any of the mood or insight.

Because the Canadian singer-songwriter is riding a shallow but growing wave of buzz into the U.S., I was hoping her sophomore effort would showcase her range of musical interests and to some extent, it does. The instrumentation is creative, unpredictable and sometimes curious, but in a good way. She's a worldly pop chanteuse that just happens to sometimes play the banjo. (I might not know punk, but that seems pretty punk, right? Right?)

After touring for two and a half years supporting her first album, Let It Die, Feist cozied up with her band in a 200-year-old French manor house to record The Reminder. It's intimate, it's torchy, and even though she seems to have been dragged down by all the self-reflection, the overall album is beautiful. So after all that deep, profound self-analysis, let's just say the cover art for The Reminder is cool, and leave it at that.

Also check out: In Defense of Amy Winehouse.
And: KT Tunstall: Telescopic Bugaloo.