NPR streaming What We Saw From The Cheap Seats

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/20/152939196/first-listen-regina-spektor-what-we-saw-from-the-cheap-seats

I am at the third song so far. (Also poaching an egg in ramen, so this blog post may be a bit fractured.)

Thoughts so far?

It's really upbeat (much more so than Far). She seems to do a bit of a back and forth with her albums. 11:11 was pretty low-key, bluesy/jazzy, but relatively positive. I've never listened to the album Songs, so I cannot tell you how that feels. Soviet Kitsch was a bit more upbeat musically, even as the themes were very dark. Then we had her pop breakthrough with Begin to Hope which was pretty light and upbeat (although truly mixed, especially with the bonus tracks). Far moved to darker themes and darker sounds. Now this album, as evidenced by the playful title, is bouncy and light. Even the songs that are a bit ominous ("All the Rowboats," "Open," "Ballad of a Politician") are whimsically so. After all, "All the Rowboats" is about paintings escaping from the museum and is almost an electronic thunderstorm. She also shouts out "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" on the album and really makes it her own in the song "Oh Marcello!" (in fact I didn't even realize that she was pulling it into the song for awhile).

First listen is relatively positive, although I loved Far so I am not sure how well she will follow that in my own mind (at least right away). This album just seems a bit mismatched to well, the here and now. The thing about Regina is that her albums grow on me extensively over the course of about two years and I realize that I truly love every song on every album. Tricky, but isn't that the mark of something special? An album that grows with you and doesn't fade over time.