My #22 All-Time Favorite Album: Far by Regina Spektor

FAR, by Regina Spektor, my #22 all-time favorite album, is the Soviet Union-born alternative/indie musical artist's fifth studio album, coming out in 2009.  Eventually I would get around to hearing it, but I first had some catching up to do after hearing her song Us, from an earlier album, around this time.  Eventually I would possess all eight of her albums...including Home, before and after which was just released last month.  On most of them there are a small number of spectacular tracks with the rest, while enjoyable, not as much to my liking.  Far, on the other hands, is loaded with very good, memorable songs...13 in all, and I very much like most of them.  Regina Spektor is a classically trained pianist and singer who emigrated with her family from the U.S.S.R. as a child in the late 1980s and since early adulthood has steadily built up her career as an alternative/indie recording artist and performer, composing all her material, which is full of beautiful melodies and arrangements combined with often quirky, funny and very incisive lyrics. After reading up on it I was surprised that Regina had four different producers on it besides herself...including Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra fame.  Here's a ranking of the songs from Far according to my own liking: 

1 Man of a Thousand Faces

2 Folding Chair

3 The Calculation

4 Dance Anthem of the 80's

5 Human of the Year

6 Eet

7 Wallet

8 Laughing With

9 Genius Next Door

10 One More Time with Feeling

11 Blue Lips

12 Machine

13 Two Birds

If someone asked me which was the first Regina Spektor album they should listen to, I would recommend Far...there is a lot of very diverse stuff here: the music is beautiful and if you don't find yourself laughing or crying to some of the songs, then you just ain't got no soul...don't blame it on Regina.  By the way, I had already composed this list I'm doing of my all-time favorite albums before Home, before and after came out last month.  I think so highly of this latest work by her that I would most likely have to alter that list to accommodate it...

Next week I discuss my #21 all-time favorite album...