Feist Re-releases First Album 'Monarch: Lay Your Jewelled Head Down' on Vinyl

Monarch holds particular mystique for certain segments of Feist fandom. Originally released by Feist independently in 1999, in 2000 now-defunct label Bobby Dazzler Records then picked the album up for distribution. Bobby Dazzler produced and sold out a run of albums and had orders coming in for more -- Feist, it seemed, was poised to break out a full seven years before the Reminder came out -- but she then blocked further pressings of the album and stopped playing any of Monarch's songs live.

"She doesn't want people to know she did the record," Chris Burland, one of the partners in Bobby Dazzler, told Maclean's in a feature about the album in Oct. 2011.

"It was as if that record didn't exist in her mind," he added.

The album is arguably just as good as the Reminder, 2004's Let it Die or last year's Metals, so there has always been some confusion about why Feist wasn't behind Monarch -- especially considering CD copies of Monarch have sold for hundreds of dollars on sites like Amazon over the years.

There are some open-hearted ruminations about love (she had been dating Andrew Whiteman of Apostle of Hustle/Broken Social Scene at the time) and family on Monarch, as well as some songs with vaguely religious tones. Perhaps one of those things was the reason why Feist was so reluctant to allow Monarch into the world.

One of the things that makes Monarch special is it's also something of an early prototype for how the Broken Social Scene family would eventually operate putting records together. Feist used a number of music friend connections in making the album, including future BSSer Brendan Canning, Jason Beck (who'd later become Gonzales) and Rheostatics member Martin Tielli, amongst others.

Regardless, that's all moot now because it appears Feist has changed her mind about the whole thing. And now the world can once again hear songs like "It's Cool to Love Your Family," "One Year A.D." and "Flight #303."