Regina Spektor
There's fresh eccentricity on Spektor's sixth album, What We Saw from the Cheap Seats.Download
The Russian-born New Yorker sings much of Oh Marcello
in a cod-Italian accent best suited to a pasta sauce advert. On a song
called The Party, she compares her paramour to "a big parade through
town"… and then imitates a trumpet. Elsewhere, she does her "impression"
of the drums. To British ears, the result doesn't sound like
beat-boxing; it sounds like EastEnders ending on a cliffhanger.
At times, Spektor can be too cutesy – does she need to refer to New York City's northernmost borough as "the Bronxy Bronx"? More often though, her little idiosyncrasies are charming. Of course, it helps that they nestle with some nifty melodies: Spektor likes a pop chorus almost as much as a vocal tic.
Besides, the quirkiness is really a corollary of Spektor's lack of
inhibition – as a performer, yes, but also as a songwriter. On the
surface, What We Saw from the Cheap Seats is an album of piano-based pop
songs, but thematically, it's more varied. Cryptic confessionals knock
shoulders with character sketches, the odd sort-of-love song and even
some social commentary.BBC
All the Rowboats takes aim at museums filled with masterpieces, calling them "public mausoleums", while Ballad of a Politician is a crisp vignette about a networker. Thankfully, neither of these tracks contains that reference to "the Bronxy Bronx".
Spektor is also capable of being very affecting. The album's centrepiece is a break-up ballad called How that already sounds like a classic. At the song's climax, Spektor needs just six words to capture all the stinging sadness of losing a lover's intimacy: "You are a guest here now."
Really, the truth about Regina Spektor is that quirky isn't the half of it.
There's fresh eccentricity on Spektor's sixth album, What We Saw from the Cheap Seats.Download
At times, Spektor can be too cutesy – does she need to refer to New York City's northernmost borough as "the Bronxy Bronx"? More often though, her little idiosyncrasies are charming. Of course, it helps that they nestle with some nifty melodies: Spektor likes a pop chorus almost as much as a vocal tic.
All the Rowboats takes aim at museums filled with masterpieces, calling them "public mausoleums", while Ballad of a Politician is a crisp vignette about a networker. Thankfully, neither of these tracks contains that reference to "the Bronxy Bronx".
Spektor is also capable of being very affecting. The album's centrepiece is a break-up ballad called How that already sounds like a classic. At the song's climax, Spektor needs just six words to capture all the stinging sadness of losing a lover's intimacy: "You are a guest here now."
Really, the truth about Regina Spektor is that quirky isn't the half of it.
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