Review Summary: Spektor delievers a weighty display of her boundless musical talents while still giving in to her happy go lucky nature to revel in the smaller joys of life. Yeah baby! Yeah!
I don't think I have ever written a review about an album before but with this fan page of mine I am just trying to find new things to put on it. First I had the movie reviews, now music reviews. What a surprise. I just read a review of
Regina Spektor's <i>Far</i> from a professional critic and they said, "While Far is far from bad, it doesn't quite live up to expectations, either, based on all the talent involved in making it and how fully Spektor expressed herself on Begin to Hope"(allmusic.com). I'm not exactly sure what the expectations were based on, but I believe that music should be viewed independently of what has come before or what may come after...as a single piece of artistic creativity. I really liked her previous albums, but I realize that people mature and refine their skills as they grow older within their craft and within themselves.
If I had any expectations at all, it would be that for many artists, the album after their biggest hit is usually a difficult one to create because of the impact that has been imprinted by the first record and the pressures of trying to match that initial success can be overwhelming. What Spektor does here, though, is create songs that sound effortless yet still imaginative. She is known for using odd vocal noises to put into her songs and she continues that here with catchy songs like “Eet” and “Folding Chair” where she makes the sounds of dolphins cooing. She really does enhance her quirkiness here, and I'm all for that. “Machine” is probably the darkest song on the album, with an industrial sound for the loss of humanness and rise of a newly found technocracy. It sounds like she's really hooked into a machine! Whoa! That's some crazy ***! “Two Birds” is like a love song of sorts, not bad. “Dance Anthem of the 80s” is really cool, very catchy and danceable. “Danceable” not a word, there spell check? Well I don't give a dead moose's last breath! I'll make it work, these words of an unknown vocabulary...
“Wallet” holds a special place in my heart because it's about Regina finding a wallet and returning to a Blockbuster because of said membership card found within it. With me working there and all, I feel a bit more...vindicated? That's probably not the word, but what the Hell, eh? “Laughing With” really brings the emotional baggage as Regina laments about society's ills and God's relation to them. It's one of my fav tracks on the album, along with “Eet”, “Human of the Year” and “Blue Lips” but I really adore the album so all the tracks are worth listening to at some point.
She is gotta be my favorite female singer out there today, such a great voice, not to mention piano skills to die for! I will be seeing her September 12th at the Chicago Theatre, so if anyone is impressed as much as I was by <i>Far</i>, then totally see her live.
DEB
