Regina Spektor - What We Saw From the Cheap Seats

Like Zooey Deschanel, Spektor is heavily represented by the media as a quirky ball of fun that's captured the hearts of hipsters with her eccentricities and stunning natural beauty. Regina Spektor's back catalogue is often, too, described as wildly out-there and whilst there are, undeniably, elements of anti-folk with jagged brushstrokes, this seems like an unfair portrayal. The fact is beneath all of the politics and unusual structures, Spektor has coined excellently simple and beautiful songs. Fidelity, her biggest success of a single so far, was an upbeat romantic popsong at its purest, and Samson was as breathtakingly poignant and adorable as music gets. Considering other tracks of Spektor's have soundtracked (500) Days of Summer and In Bruges there comes the argument: has indie folk, with its British counterparts including Kate Nash and Laura Marling, become so popular that its eccentricities and USP are now redundant?

Spektor's 6th studio album contains only one entirely new song (Jessica). It might not appear unusual to debut new material in live performances but when considering that Don't Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas) was on 2002's Songs and this project's single All the Rowboats was floating around in 2005, there's a fear that there's nothing left to wow with.

If anyone needed convincing that some of her edges have mellowed then the subtle piano melody that introduces 'Small Town Moon' should do the trick. "How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?" Spektor pores, before resolving that "today we're younger than we ever gonna be". Jolts of electric guitars and thudding drums give her the desired joie de vivre to accompany her message, dispelling all fears of blandness. Borrowing the lyrics from Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood on 'Oh Marcello', the track's a quirky one that sees Spektor providing her own vocal drum effects. Added to the distorted piano arpeggios and her Italian accent it's an odd glimpse of giving birth to a murderer. The brassy instrumentals and cutenesses become a little too sugary on 'Don't Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas)', which, by the time Spektor rejoices "I love Paris in the rain!" is like a frosting of pure diabetes.

Doing her best Joni Mitchell impression, 'Firewood' is a beautifully mawkish ballad that yearns for childhood past ("You'll take your clock off of your wall and you'll wish it was lying"). 'Patron Saint' is a precautionary tale about a self-destructive woman, and has some amusing bluntnesses about it - "she'll break her own heart - and you," but again feels slightly camp and kitsch, as though singing about a pantomime stepmother. At her best, however, Spektor is able to destroy hearts herself with devastatingly sentimental and poignant arrangements: the backing to 'How' is a church organ away from a Shangri-Las breakdown (you can practically imagine their pained expressions sighing the line "I just want my memories to remain"). Following it with the sinister, foreboding double act of 'All the Rowboats' ("and the captain's worried faces stay contorted and staring at the waves") and 'Ballad of a Politician', which warns "You're gonna make us scream someday/ you're gonna make us weak", is quite an unusual move on Spektor's part, and not one I can see really fitting in with any of the album's other tracks. But then, that's more than often her charm, and the album's first single is a bedazzling lyrical tale of artifacts being imprisoned within galleries and museums. Unusual, but fun.

It falls to 'Open' to sweep us off our feet with emotion again, and it succeeds in unorthodox execution. Starting fairly innocently and quietly - all "potentially lovely/ perpetually human" - Spektor finally takes sharp, violent inhalations whilst describing the architecture of her defence mechanisms, making it sound like a DIY S.O.S./The Exorcist crossover. The album opts to close peacefully and prettily, though; 'The Party' reckons you "taste like birthday" and "look like New Year", and builds with marching bands and gusto. "I can't write a song for you/ I'm out of melodies" might just get used by the more spiteful detractors, but 'Jessica' feels too small, too ineffectual to criticize.

Which is the album's biggest complaint, really. The only wholly new creation being so brief, so obvious, doesn't do anything to dispell those earlier fears. Her reworkings and polishings of existing songs, though, is to be commended, and if exploring her own discography is able to bear fruits like 'How' and 'Open' then I can't help but welcome it.


Rating: 7/10
Highlights: How, Open, Firewood, Small Town Moon, All the Rowboats
Avoid: Don't Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas), Oh Marcello, Patron Saint

Artwork Watch: Uh. Meh.
Up next: Adam Lambert