W.S. Walcott Medicine Show

Regina Spektor Live at Warsaw (2024-12-10)

Back in 2002, while such New York City bands as The Strokes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were setting the indie music world on fire, there was another quite different scene taking place in the environs of the East Village and The Lower East Side. The Anti-folk scene had been around for sometime when the new millenium turned but it was with acts like Moldy Peaches, Jeffrey Lewis and most notably (at least today), Regina Spektor helped turn the genre into a real thing. But back in the early oughts these bands were self producing albums and self distributing them via CD-R’s mostly at pass the hat clubs, coffehouses or whatever available space that was available to them at the time. It was exactly in this manner that Regina Spektor originally sold her 2002 album Songs. CD-R’s out of her backpack as she struggled to make ends meet while playing gigs at places like Sophie’s Bar and of course the headquarters of the anti-folk scene, The SIdewalk Cafe. The following year, with the help of a well placed song in multiple TV and movie soundtracks and the iminent record label releases of Soviet Kitsch and then Begin To Hope, everything would change for the Soviet born but U.S. raised Spektor.

Fast forward to 2024 and Songs has gotten a propper re-release and to celebrate that Regina announced a handful of extremely intimate shows that she would be doing at Greenpoint’s Warsaw. I say intimate since in the recent past she normally plays venues like The Beacon, Central Park Summerstage, The Wellmont Theatre and even UBS Arena, so three shows at Warsaw with its 1100 person capacity would be a real treat for her die hard fans. The fact that she would be playing the album Songs in it’s entirety was the cherry topping it all off.

I’d never seen Spektor before so I was especially psyched to be getting the opportunity to catch the third and last show of this run. With a showtime scheduled for 8 PM, Spektor took to the stage a little bit past 8:30 and proceeded to shower the rapt crowd with shy and bashful banter about almost everything in between songs. We heard about how much she had to practice to learn these songs again after not having playing many of them for 22 years. About how complicated young Regina made her music with difficult chords and chord changes, not to mention the effusive amount of words. She would appologize in advanve for the mistakes which she fully expected to make. (She had mentioned during Sunday’s set that she was sorry for screwing up but if you come tomorrow night, she would do better). We also got to hear the story of her going to Minnesota after graduating college to make money working on a butterfly farm.

But as fun and enjoyable as the back and forth banter was between Spektor and the adoring crowd, it was the music that was truly mesmerizing. FIrst off, her work on the ivory keys was that of a true maestro. And don’t even get me started with her, at times, childlike voice and other times theatrical stylings. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any other vocalist come close to what Joni Mitchell was able to accomplish with her vocals back in her heyday but Regina pulled off a damned close second.

As I’ve already said, the crowd itself was glued to what they were witnessing. A shoulder to shoulder, packed room of over 1000 people and each and every one of them were intensely paying attention to every word uttered from her mouth, be it sung or spoken.

As in night’s past, once the Songs portion of the evening came to fruition, with “Ne Me Quitte Pas”, Spektor proceeded into the “other” portion of the show which was equally transcendent. Beginning with Soviet Kitsch‘s “Us” and rolling through another seven hits and fan favorites before exiting the stage only to return for a two song encore of 2009’s “Two Birds” from the album Far and to cap the evening off a fun and entertaining rendition of “Hotel Song” from her breakout Begin To Hope album with the aid of former Moldy Peach and long time collaborator of Spektor’s Jack Dishel.

Making a long story somewhat short, what a great night of beautiful music!

Slideshow

Setlist-

Prisoners

Reading Time With Pickle

Oedipus

Bon idée

Daniel Cowman

Lounge

Aching to Pupate

Consequence of Sounds

Lacrimosa

Lullaby

Samson

Ne Me Quitte Pas

Us

Firewood

Baby Jesus

Better

December

Raindrops

Open

Fidelity

Encore:

Two Birds

Hotel Song