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Jul 24, 2012Many of these songs are merely bemused, and when she revises "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good," all she achieves is a different singalong from the one you expected.
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MojoJul 18, 2012Spektor delivers everything with such guileless brio that you never notice the join [between troubadour style to chrome-clean hip hop].
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Jul 2, 2012[Cheap Seats] will please the masses by doing what she does best. That is, have fun, play games, and make beautiful music.
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MagnetJun 19, 2012The songs on WWSFTC all hint at loss, limitation and aging, with Spektor's poetic sensibility and passionate singing giving the LP a wrenching sense of vulnerability. [No.88 p.59]
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May 31, 2012What We Saw From The Cheap Seats could've been Spektor's magnum opus, but the flashes of brilliance here are enough to keep us hoping for her next release.
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May 31, 2012Much like Begin to Hope and Far, this record generally continues to juggle the same genres Spektor has inhabited up to this point.
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May 30, 2012Though it rarely makes good on the promise of her earlier songs, Cheap Seats is polarizing, and by now most listeners will have already decided whether or not they can stomach Spektor's peculiar kind of verite, glass-half-full optimism.
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May 29, 2012What We Saw from the Cheap Seats succeeds more often than it frustrates.
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May 29, 2012It might be coming from the cheap seats, but for the most part, this is classy stuff.
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May 29, 2012There's not a weak track on the record, and there's something arresting in each song.
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May 29, 2012Beyond her playing, Spektor holds together the music on Cheap Seats with her singing, which even at its most intricately melodic (as in "Oh Marcello") retains an improvisatory feel.
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May 29, 2012At her best, Spektor tempers her theatrics with a deep-seated empathy. Beneath the yelps, gasps, and exaggerated accents, she's a romantic, and What We Saw is her most deeply felt, resonant work to date.
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May 29, 2012Even tighter and more flamboyant than 2009's Far, [What We Saw From the Cheap Seats] may be her best.
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May 24, 2012She probably remains a bit of an acquired taste for some, but What We Saw From The Cheap Seats pulls off the impressive trick of stylistically bouncing about all over the place while retaining a very identifiable vision all of its own.
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May 24, 2012At times, Spektor can be too cutesy... More often though, her little idiosyncrasies are charming.
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May 24, 2012Her best effort yet.
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May 24, 2012Spektor still lets her theater-kid id run free, with affected accents ("Oh Marcello") and self-conscious heavy-breathing tricks ("Open").
User score distribution:
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Positive: 70 out of 86
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Mixed: 7 out of 86
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Negative: 9 out of 86
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Aug 19, 2012
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May 29, 2012
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May 31, 2012