Too Early for Album and Song of 2012?

Having recently obtained a copy of Regina Spektor's new release What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, I was a little apprehensive.  After all, two different musical acts that I have come to greatly admire, Sufjan Stevens and Radiohead, had recently issued new albums that, frankly, seriously disappointed me.  With Stevens it was worse, with a disappointing EP released almost concurrently with a letdown of an LP.  So I thought that maybe, just maybe, musical creative talent was thinning out of our atmosphere, possibly attributable to the extensive and exploding talk radio bullcrap polluting our airwaves.  Then I listened to Regina Spektor's new work.  What a work.

Often it takes me a few listens to get a feeling for a new recording.  Regina's new album was love at first listen, though.  Out of the eleven tracks on What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, I disliked only one (and it was the shortest song).  The rest was good listening...and then there were the two tracks that I could only reasonably describe as masterpieces.

Firewood and Open are about as good as it can get.  And Firewood went further: it made me literally cry (and it takes an awful lot to get someone like me into that state).  Each and every time I heard it I wept, and it got to be a little embarrassing when I would listen to it on my MP3 player out in public.  As a matter of fact, as far as I am concerned, Firewood is now the all-time greatest tear-jerking song.  Just beautiful.  And Open?  A more philosophically-bent piece it is, with a rather disturbing but very inspired and creative vocal twist in its middle that intensifies its message.  Of the two, though, Firewood has instantly shot up to become my favorite song of 2012 (with Open comfortably in second place).  Already, in early July.

Can I just close out the rest of 2012 and declare What We Saw From the Cheap Seats as this year's greatest album and Firewood as the song of the year?  Why not?  I have a hard time imagining how any new album or song would have a chance of surpassing them...

Regina...what an appropriate name: she rules!