regina spektor – The Concordian

Regina Spektor – Remember Us to Life (Sire Records, 2016)

Regina Spektor’s seventh studio album, Remember Us to Life, is arguably one of the singer’s strongest to date. The album is full of slow, melodic tunes that tell stories reminiscent of Spektor’s previous albums, including Far and What We Saw From the Cheap Seats. However, this new album also has a maturity and sadness that her previous albums lacked. While Spektor takes risks with more electronic sounding, fast-paced tracks, like “Bleeding Heart” and “Smalls Bill$,” the album’s strongest songs feature mainly piano and orchestral strings. Songs like “Sellers of Flowers” and “Grand Hotel” really use these instruments to create a stunning dream-like vibe, while telling stories of an old winter marketplace and a hotel haunted by indolent demons. The album tackles themes such as aging and death, leaving loved ones and disillusionment. Spektor’s masterful storytelling, poetry and timing are what really make this album a masterpiece.

Trial track: “Grand Hotel”

Rating: 9/10

Regina Spektor stopped by Montreal Tuesday night to wow her fans with a two-hour-long set of pure musical magic. Jack Dishel, a.k.a. Only Son, opened up the concert with a 35-minute set punctured with playful humor.

An atmosphere of anticipation vibrated in the crowd and when Spektor came on stage the venue erupted in cheers. Against a backdrop of uneven cascading mobiles of white-squares, she began her acapella solo, “Ain’t No Cover”.

Blue, red and yellow lights reflected on the mobiles as Spektor, perched on the seat of an elegant Steinway piano, delivered a string of heartfelt songs. Fans gleefully sang along to favorites such as “Sailor Song”, “On The Radio”, and “Blue Lips”.

Spektor’s latest album What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, featured prominently on her set list. Songs like “All The Rowboats” and “Ballad of a Politician” had fans singing and clapping, while “Open” moved fans to silence as Spektor crooned into her mic “potentially lovely/perpetually human”.

Halfway through her set, Spektor invited Only Son (her real-life husband) back on stage to perform “Call Them Brothers”, a song they wrote together. Spektor followed that performance with a crowd-quieting number called “The Prayer”, which she sang in her mother tongue, Russian. Despite the crowd’s ignorance of the language, the feeling and beauty of the song was not lost and Spektor delivered what might have been the performance of the night.

Spektor’s performance of songs like “Samson” and “How” surely gave audience members chills and she humbly accepted compliments from the crowd like “You’re beautiful!!” and “You’re an angel!”

Finishing her set with “The Party”, Spektor and her band were quickly and loudly called back on stage for an encore, which prompted favorites like “Us” and “Fidelity”. As she left the stage for good, the crowd reluctantly forced itself to breakaway from the songstresses spell.