Regina Spektor and I have had a pretty close relationship for about four years now. I listen to her music religiously, dance to her songs in my car, and see her shows – all while she is off making beautiful melodies and doing whatever it is a quirky Russian anti-folk artist does. So okay, this love that Regina and I have isn’t exactly mutual, but regardless of whether or not she knows my name, her music never ceases to amaze me. With her 2006 release, Begin to Hope ranking number 20 on the Billboard Top 100 chart, Regina Spektor’s fifth studio album, Far has been her most anticipated work yet. It is for this reason that I am outrageously overjoyed to be able to tell the we-rate-stuff world how absolutely worth the wait this album was.

Normally when I submerge my heart into an artist’s work as far as I have with RESPEKT’s (that’s short for REgina SPEKTor. Clever, I know.) it comes with the fear that said artist will one day change themselves completely and I will no longer respekt (I just had to) their music as much as I once did. Even after having a number one album for five consecutive weeks, this is completely NOT the case with Regina. Although Far is clearly a more polished and clean side of Spektor’s music, her fun and playful beat boxing, chair tapping, vowel stressing style shows itself to be very present in her new work.

The first song on this album, “The Calculation” made me scream the first time I heard it because it is just that good. It’s cute, it’s catchy and it just makes me want to dance a lot. My favorite aspect of her music is that she takes such deep issues and somehow wraps them up into fun poppy songs. This is the case in not only the first song, which discusses a naïve relationship that’s headed downhill, but many others on the album. The first single, “Laughing With” has these crazy emotional lyrics that touch on the idea that at some point in everyone’s life, they turn to God for assistance. Other songs, like “Blue Lips” and “Human of the Year” also have spiritual/religious vibes to them. Although her more serious songs differ greatly from her radio hits, the songs that clearly have deeper meanings, such as “Genius Next Door” and “Man of a Thousand Faces” add so much to the album. Every single song tells a completely different story, and Regina’s ability to do that really shows on this album. The more serious songs even manage to still reveal some of that classic RESPEKT oddness, as heard in the song “Eet” when she ends by mumbling a nice little beat under her breath. Oh, Regina.

After waiting for so long for it, what excited me the most about this album was that Regina finally decided to take songs that have always been really good demos and expand them. Tracks like “Folding Chair,” “Human of the Year,” and “One More Time With Feeling” are some of my favorites by her because they were always just mysteriously floating around the internet and would occasionally pop up during her shows, but now they’re actually official and they’re better than ever. “Folding Chair” would have to be my favorite song on this CD, and I could very easily see it becoming my favorite song she has ever released. I would recommend that anyone who is sad listen to this track, because the happiness that surrounds this song is seriously infectious. This song shows that even in the midst of big name producers as a result of her newly acquired fame, Regina Spektor is not afraid to stretch a two syllable word into a seven syllable one (example: for-ge-eh-eh-eh-eh-et) or sing like a dolphin (yes, really. Listen if you don’t believe me). Other up-beat catchy songs like this include “Wallet,” “Dance Anthem of the 80’s,” and “Two Birds.” These songs are all so groovy, I think it’s humanly impossible to listen to any of them without tapping a finger or a foot, or both. The contrast between these songs and the more serious sounding songs described earlier displays itself beautifully throughout the album, as does the contrast between really simple and complex ideas and sounds.

Really devoted Regina fans would agree with me when I say that none of her albums, although amazing, do any real justice to how great of a performer she is live. The raw and simple sound of her voice, a piano, and the occasional drumstick tapping on a chair is what really makes Regina Spektor the unique artist that she is. Although I’d listen to her perform Far alone on a piano with no effects or editing over the actual studio album any day, this CD is exactly what the world needed from Regina. It contains just the right amount of that fresh new feeling while still sticking to her classic technique. The fact that there are no “Consequence of Sounds” or “Poor Little Rich Boy” sounding songs on this album does make me a tiny bit sad, but through the extremely well-crafted blend of songs on Far, Regina has given me the confidence to say that her classic style that fans love isn’t going to be altered any time soon. To go from having such a strong underground following to having huge mainstream success in the short amount of time that Regina Spektor did, there was a lot weighing on this album, and in my opinion, she conquered it flawlessly.