You know that time of year when you just stop caring? You visit your friends less because maybe it‰’s snowing and you have too much homework then all of a sudden your dog has the runs all while your mom is calling to tell you that bitch across the street has the same Christmas decorations as her. All you want to do is curl up in bed with apple cider (spiked with rum if it‰’s one of those days that ends with the letter “y”) and maybe watch a few episodes of the O.C. to help you remind yourself of the time before you knew what the words “adorkable‰” and “fupa‰” meant.

So if you’re feeling this way, first come with me to the doctor so we can both be diagnosed with a case of the SADs, and then go and listen to Feist‰’s new album.

Leslie Feist, known just as her surname, has a new album out called Metals. Although her new album does not have as alarmingly catchy of a song as “1, 2, 3, 4‰” that we all know and love from the Apple commercials, Metals offers a more soulful look into who Feist is as a woman. This album is wrought with more heartache than her previous ones and presents a more mature outlook on life. She has not made a new album in years since The Reminder and the break has done her good. Now 35, Feist has lost the whimsy she once knew. Her days of singing about teenage love are over. Instead, she is now a woman who brings an enlightened wisdom to her music.

It is evident after listening to Metals that Feist offers a less naÌøve and quite honestly, a less annoying, take on love. In “The Bad in Each Other,‰” Feist harkens on the darkness that pervades two seemingly sane people after falling in love. This is the perfect album for anyone who feels torn or bruised by past love, especially the song “Bittersweet Melodies,‰” where Feist tugs at your heartstrings when she sings “Can‰’t go back. Can‰’t go on‰Û. Feist does not offer advice on how to mend broken hearts or stay away from unhealthy love, but rather proves to the listener that the pains of love even affect a millionaire celebrity like herself. No one goes unscathed by misery.

Don‰’t get me wrong, Metals is not a pity party. On the contrary, it is almost a celebration of heartache and a testament to survival. Feist turned sadness into a brilliant soulful masterpiece proving to whoever broke her heart that she has the last laugh. This is not a “fuck you‰” album to her past lovers, but rather a “thank you for helping me grow as a human being‰” kind of album.

I highly recommend this album not only because I have been a Feist fan-girl since Broken Social Scene, but for the story behind the production of the album alone. In a quest to find herself, Feist traveled the country and ended up in Big Sur, California, a past haven for intellectual bohemians like Allen Ginsberg, where she bought a barn and renovated it into a studio where her and her friends made a truly beautiful album. As a lover and visitor of Big Sur, Feist captures the relaxed essence of her surroundings and offers an album that encapsulates the sometimes devastatingly beautiful nature of love and love lost.

Buy this album and let Feist teach you how to be the bigger person.