Open Season

1	One Evening Gonzales Solo Piano / Instrumental 2:22
2	Inside + Out Live / Apostle of Hustle Unmix Live at the BBC 3:33
3	Mushaboom Mocky Mix 5:03
4	Gatekeeper One Room One Hour Mix 2:44
5	Lonely Lonely Frisbee'd Mix 6:24
6	Mushaboom K-Os Mix 3:30
7	Snow Lion 3:38
8	Tout Doucement 2:31
9	The Simple Story 3:55
10	Lovertits 2:44
11	Mushaboom Postal Service Remix 3:35
12	Gatekeeper Do Right Mix 5:27
13	One Evening VV Mix 4:02
14	When I Was a Young Girl VV Mix 5:28
15	Mushaboom VV Mix 5:26

Barnes & Noble

Having successfully made the move from the art house to the dance floor with her last outing, Let It Die, this Canadian torch song torchbearer edges a bit further in that direction with this odds 'n' sods collection, which is dominated by clever, wide-ranging remixes of tunes from that breakthrough disc. The irresistible "Mushaboom" is afforded four separate revisions here, and each has its charms, from the twee synth-pop-ization rendered by the Postal Service to the more low-end intensive hip-hop spin applied by K-OS. The tracks that Feist tweaks on her own steam are every bit as impressive, particularly her pared-to-the-bone acoustic take on the beckoning "Inside + Out" (culled from a BBC session recorded last year) and a surprisingly sweet, lilting cover of "Lovertits" (a typically lusty paean from longtime pal Peaches). The disc's most immediately attention-grabbing song might be "Snow Lion," a tune initially deemed unworthy of inclusion on Let It Die. With its languid, caressing beats and ethereal harp fillips, it could easily be this season's answer to "Mushaboom" -- as translatable to the ballroom as to the bedroom, offering pleasures wherever it's spun. David Sprague

All Music Guide

Though Leslie Feist declares in the liner notes to Open Season that initially she "didn't really understand what remixes were," she obviously was quickly acquainted with them and the potential they could hold by the time she started putting her album together. Open Season, a collection of remixes of some songs from Let It Die as well as collaborations with others, provides an interesting look into the possibilities of Feist's music. With help from artists like K-Os, the Postal Service, Mocky, and songwriting partner Gonzales, Feist's songs are reconstructed using new drumbeats, added instrumentation, and vocal effects, with each producer choosing certain aspects and emotions of the original to emphasize. Sometimes, like in Julian Brown's "Apostle of Hustle Unmix" of "Inside and Out," the results are sparse and haunting, while other times what is produced -- the Postal Service's version of "Mushaboom," complete with a Ben Gibbard vocal track -- is much more intricate and intense than the sweet daydreams of the Let It Die version. Usually these reworkings turn out quite nicely, exploiting the different facets of the songs for what they're worth. Only toward the end of Open Season, when production team VV (Gonzales and Renaud Letang, who also worked on Let It Die) take over and add dancey, almost house-like elements to "One Evening," "When I Was a Young Girl," and "Mushaboom," do things begin to sound a little cheesy and unnecessary, over-produced in that campy way, which is unfortunate, because most of the record is really quite good, including her performances with other artists. Her duet with Jane Birkin, for example, "The Simple Story" (which is also found on Birkin's 2004 album, Rendez-Vous), is lovely with its lush strings and chorus, and sounds very much like something Birkin would have sung in the 1970s. But more than its individual parts, Open Season as an album shows the versatility of Feist's music and voice, how it can move from near trip-hop to French cabaret and all those delicate spaces in between, and almost always sound just right. Marisa Brown

Billboard

As VV, Mocky, k-os and others reshape her sparse beats and jazzy French-pop grooves, Feist's slippery, ethereal voice only grows more distinctive. Sven Philipp

Los Angeles Daily News

Feist's languid delivery and simple yet effective melodies provide an ideal template for imaginative tweaking. Fred Shuster