Regina Spektor had almost made it to the finish of her first proper concert in more than three years on Thursday when near the end of “Samson,” one of her most-loved songs, she lost the thread. The music stopped, her hands hovered over the keyboard of her grand piano, her mind suddenly blank as to what notes came next.
It could have been a disaster, but with cheers of encouragement from the adoring audience in the El Rey Theatre – “My sassy motivational speakers,” Spektor called them earlier – she turned it into a triumph, following a shouted suggestion to finish it a cappella by turning to face the crowd to sing and conduct a choir of hundreds in a final run through the chorus.
This is how it works when an artist and an audience make the deepest kinds of connections, and for Spektor, it had to have felt wonderful, knowing her fans were still there for her after three years off the road during which she had her first child and wrote her seventh album, and they’d be there for her no matter the occasional flutter or flaw.
“Wow, you’re here!” the quirky singer-songwriter exclaimed when she’d walked on stage at the El Rey for the first of two sold-out shows at the Los Angeles venue. “It’s kind of like throwing yourself a birthday party and hoping people come. Can we just hang out? Can I not play? Can we just talk about movies and books we like?”
They probably could have, but with a new record, “Remember Us To Life,” out on Friday, there was music to be made, starting with an older number, “On The Radio,” a bouncy, upbeat melody that as with many of her songs disguises the uncertainty of the story in its lyrics.
Spektor’s instrument of choice, of course, is the piano but her vocals are an equal part of what makes her so special, heartfelt and emotional at one point – the older song “Better,” for instance, which came second in the set – then bent to produce various vocal effects and accents at another – the new number “Small Bill$” almost felt like a hip-hop vocal when it arrived later in the show, Spektor abandoning her Steinway to sing it from the edge of the stage.
“Remember Us To Life” provided the heart of the 20-song set Spektor delivered over her hour and 45 minutes on stage, with all but one of its 11 tracks played here, most of them getting their first live performances outside of a handful of late-night TV talk show appearances she’s done this month. And despite the relatively unfamiliarity of the new tunes the crowd – remember, they love her – responded with love and appreciation after each one.
At first listen, it sounds to the ears and feels in the heart like a strong collection of songs. “Grand Hotel” has that quicky story-telling style for which Spektor is rightly known – several early reviews of the record refer to it as a musical version of Wes Anderson’s “Grand Budapest Hotel” and the point is well taken, its mix of whimsy and romance and oddly endearing characters fitting that mold nicely.
“Bleeding Heart,” the album opener, is another winner, arriving on Thursday with a powerful and heartbreakingly lovely vocal, gentle at the outset, furiously aggressive by its piano key-pounding finish. As on the album, the arrangements have a delicacy that feels fresh: her band at the El Rey included a drummer, keyboardist and a string quartet of cello, viola and two violins.
My two favorites of the new songs were “The Light,” a song in which you feel like Spektor is more the protagonist here than the observer she usually is (“You and your daddy, you both look like poets / Your eyes are open wide while you are in a dream” certainly feels like a line a new mother might have written) and “Obsolete,” another that feels revealing and honest as its piano arpeggios and the strings created shimmering waves of melody. Stunners, the both of those.
(It was during “Obstacle,” by the by, that one of the weirder aspects of the show finally concluded, that being the removal or quieting of the very loud, possibly inebriated drag queen who repeatedly shouted his deep-voiced love for Spektor. “I’m dressed as YOU, Regina! A GODDESS!” he shouted enough times that the crowd went from laughter to dismay. Spektor, for her part, took it all in good-humored, if slightly startled, stride.)
Late in the set “You’ve Got Time,” the theme Spektor wrote for the Netflix series “Orange Is The New Black” drew a big response from the crowd, but the quieter songs drawn from older albums felt even more emotionally rewarding, from “Blue Lips” near the end of the main set to “Fidelity” which opened the encore.
“Hotel Song,” another of the rare numbers that got her away from the piano to sing its syncopated rhythms more directly to the crowd, and then “Samson,” which could have been as unlucky for Spektor as that haircut was for the title character, but ended up perfectly imperfect and absolutely human.
She’ll probably come back through town next summer and play a larger venue such as the Greek, where she stopped on her last two tours. She’ll no doubt have all the keys and notes in their proper places by then. But on Thursday at the El Rey, unexpected things happened, and in those moments, well, that’s when magic happens, isn’t it?
Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@scng.com
