Regina Spektor - Far

A lot of people who expressed interest in Regina Spektor during her rise through New York's anti-folk scene, jumped ship when she released her "pop" crossover, Begin To Hope. Although I felt it didn't have the purity and freshness of Soviet Kitsch, I have never been one to dismiss an artist for simply making a more "commercial" album. I personally felt the songs on Begin To Hope held up to the quality of material she had been pitching on her previous record albeit leaner and more polished. Songs like "Better" and "Fidelity" benefited with a sleek approach whereas songs like "Field" Below" and "Summer In The City" were minimal songs and stayed that way. Some tracks like "20 Years Of Snow" for instance might have been better if she had kept it sparse, but on a whole Begin To Hope was a decent effort (in other words, not as good as Societ Kitsch, but a worthy followup) and was what I had hoped would be the beginning of an adventurous career for the songwriter.

That album's followup, Far, was far from adventurous. Although I was optimistic for her next Sire record, I secretly feared she would try to repeat the formula of her breakthrough. On the surface it didn't seem like she did, as this record she worked with four different producers (Mike Elizondo, Jeff Lynne, David Kahne, and Jacknife Lee), but this approach basically led to the sound of the album being very shallow. None of the producers really had the time to get into her head and experiment with the songs. The good news is that repeated listens do eventually pay off. While the album still does open very weakly with a string of unaffected, cutesy tracks, I can say there is a decent block of tunes from track 5-11. Although the flow is terrible, when taken on one by one, the songs can be quite endearing. The producer who ends up winning out of the four is Jacknife Lee who manages to save "Laughing With"'s Hallmark sentiments with strings and a flowing melody from the singer. A building of momentum seems to be his best trait (his work with Bloc Party shows this masterfully), on his other two contributions, "Two Birds" and "Dance Anthem Of The 80's" which both have great arrangements although the latter may actually have benefited from elaborated instrumentation.

As mentioned earlier, the album doesn't really offer anything good until about halfway. Hip-hop producer Mike Elizondo (who's most profile gig oddly enough was Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine) is at the boards on "The Calculation" and "Eet", which are tired attempts at winning you over with cuteness. "Eet" tries valiantly to be sentimental and meaningful but fails at really conveying any real emotion. "Machine" fares better with hard hitting beats on its chorus, as well as a nice touch of feedback following. Surprisingly, Jeff Lynne's contribution falls flat and seems almost wasteful. "Folding Chair" falls under the same softness of Elizondo's production work, and "Blue Lips" just doesn't have any quality that makes you want to revisit it. One song he does win out on through is "The Wallet", probably the best song here, but that's all Spektor. In it, she finds the wallet of an unknown person and goes through its contents, searching for clues about who this person could be. There are very subtle layers of the character's loneliness that seep through the seems of the song, especially in its coda, that pull on your heartstrings much better than any of the more straightforward songs that precede it. Begin To Hope's producer David Kahne does "Human Of The Year", a track that seems fully intact no matter who is recording it, and "One More Time With Feeling", a highly forgettable late album track.

All in all, the good does outweigh the bad, just barely though. This is not the type of record that's likely to rope in new fans as it doesn't offer anything close to the greatness of her previous work. My advice to Spektor would be to simply get her sights set on one producer in particular, as most multi-produced albums such as this suffer from similar problems.