Regina Spektor

Remember Us To Life

The Soviet Unionborn, New York-raised chanteuse’s assured seventh long-player.

Regina Spektor’s albums are hallmarked by eclecticism – one minute she’s an East Village anti-folky, the next a peppy neoRandy Newman. 2012’s What We Saw From The Cheap Seats began to dial down the heterogeneity, a process that continues on Remember Us To Life. Granted, she still meanders between electronic-infused pop (Bleeding Heart), Eastern-tinged R&B (Small Bill$) and AOR balladry (Black And White), but crisp production and Spektor’s pliant, atypically measured vocals keep things focused. Elsewhere, a heartstringtugging ballad, The Light, could be a standard in the making, its always-ascending chorus nodding, satisfyingly, to Joni Mitchell. The latter’s influence is implicit on the semi-spoken The Trapper And The Furrier, with its sweeping political vituperations (“What a strange world we live in/ Where the good are damned and the wicked forgiven”), although the fractured verses summon the fevered spirit of Nick Cave, no less.