[ALBUM OF THE WEEK] REGINA SPEKTOR
What We Saw From The Cheap Seats
Sire/Warner
****1/2
Regina Spektor can do no wrong. Over the course of a six-album career, she's released increasingly bubbly and enticing tunes that pull the listener into a whirlpool of 'quirk' and 'charm' like a talented Zooey Deschanel, dropping pseudo-scat and a massive vocal range into folk-pop while creating uniquely powerful musical moments.
Her latest record, What We Saw From The Cheap Seats is an eleven-track exercise in the unsurprising. Not in the way your three-bottle hangover is unsurprising, but in the way that freshly baked pretzels are a genuinely failsafe day-maker: light, crisp and a little buttery, but incredible nonetheless. 'All The Rowboats' (already sailing the radio waves) is a standout, its drum-heavy, keyboard-infused kinda-electronica almost indefinitely listenable. 'Firewood' is laden with heartfelt longing and heavier on the piano – yet still so wide and inviting. 'The Party' is anthemic, underlaid with choral organ and rolling snares, and so very convincing.
It's an album full of good songs, and while there may be no piece that strokes the soul quite like 'Samson' from Begin To Hope, at its worst it is still some of the best pop music to come out this year. Regina Spektor doesn't fall back on airy whispers or hippy dreamings to create her music; instead, her storytelling dives into the hyperreal, through
an occasionally confusing but always masterful lyrical suite.
This is easy-listening super-pop, just alternative enough that it suits your left-of-field aesthetic, but accessible enough that you can listen to it in the car with your mother, and talk about its intricacies, and how eclectic the music is. What We Saw… is Regina Spektor at her strongest.
An album that's for (almost) everyone: so engaging, catchy and genuinely non-offensive that it can't be denied.
Alex Watts
