We recently spoke with Russian-born chanteuse Regina Spektor about her new album, Far (out June 23rd). We got to hear the album and it's AMAZING, so we thought we'd share the chat with y'all.
FAR features 13 new tracks by Spektor, and the production work of four A-list producers, including Jeff Lynne (ELO, Traveling Wilburys), Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Eminem, Fiona Apple), David Kahne (Paul McCartney, the Strokes) and Garrett "Jacknife" Lee (Weezer, REM).
"I
wanted to learn as much as possible from as many people as I could,"
Spektor tells us. "If I had more time and if I got to make a 25-song
record, I would have worked with another four or five or six people,
just because it is so amazing to experience how different producers
approach things and what they’re looking for in sounds."
What are you up to? Are you still busy working?
Yeah.
I had yet another super late studio night last night, and I’m a bit of
a zombie, so I might ramble and not make sense. I’m sorry for that.
The new stuff sounds great.
Thank you. It’s hard to be transitioning into the fact that it’s a real thing now; that it’s going to be a real record.
When did you sit down and say, “I’m making a record and I want to use a bunch of different producers.”
I
think I started saying that a while ago, in my head. Even long before I
started the record, I just sort of realized that…in one way, it’s
really cool that I got to tour behind Begin to Hope for such a long
time, because as I would bitch about it to people, I would find out
that it’s very rare, and it’s a good thing to have your record be
around for a while, as opposed to having it come and go in a blink.
But
it did sort of hit me two years into it, “Oh my God, I have so many
songs already, when are we going to make a new record?” So I started
thinking, “I have to treat my chances to make a record in a different
way.” Not that I ever really had the chance to take it for granted, but
I think I’m so constantly afraid to take anything for granted that I
was like, “You have to really use it almost like…”
Begin to
Hope was such a learning experience for me that I used to constantly
call David Kahne my professor instead of my producer in interviews. So
I wanted to have that three-fold, four-fold, five-fold, whatever I
could, just learn as much from as many people as I could. That’s how
the whole four producers happened. If I had more time and if I got to
make a 25-song record, I would have worked with another four or five or
six people, just because it is so amazing to experience how different
producers approach things and what they’re looking for in sounds. It’s
also much harder, I think, than making a record with one producer,
because you have to condense the experience, and you don’t get this
whole long arc of getting to know somebody. But in another way, because
you’re careful about the time and you know that there’s a limit of
three or four or five songs, it’s really a concentrated experience.
It’s like being in the hot seat.
Yeah, exactly. “Wow, I have two weeks, go!” Definitely a hot seat kind of thing.
Which one of these producers did you work with first?
The first one I was in the studio with was Mike Elizondo.
He did amazing stuff with Fiona Apple…
To
tell you the truth, I love Fiona Apple, and I heard some of the songs
that he’d done with her, but I'm horrible at researching and
remembering what people have done before. If somebody really cares to
talk to people who only know their merits, I’m a walking insult hazard,
because a lot of the time, I have no idea who anybody is or what
they’ve done.
So I actually ended up having experienced most
of these people, all of them, except David, because I’d already worked
with him before, finding out who they are and what they did as we were
working, or sometimes after. Luckily, for me, they’re all super humble
and low key people. They’re all easy going, so they didn’t seem to be
bothered by the fact that I had no idea who they were.
Then,
of course, as time went on…that’s been my path in the first place, I
think, because I’m so behind, always. I’m constantly catching up on
things. I find out the awesome thing after everybody knows about the
awesome thing. With Mike, a lot of it has to do with scheduling and who
was up for being available first. He came to New York, and I’d had such
a good experience making the record in New York the last time that I
was just like, “That’s it, I have to make all my records in New York,
because I live here and this is my home and I feel like a person when I
do it here. I don’t feel disconnected and weird.” Then, of course, we
worked for like a week and nothing was finished, and I was like,
“Fuck!” I had to sort of rethink that and start going to places. Then I
worked with Garrett in London, and then I went and worked with Jeff
Lynne in L.A., and then I went and finished some of the work with Mike
Elizondo in Westlake, and then worked some more with Jeff Lynne, and
then talked with Garrett, and then David in New York. So I wasn’t home
for most of the record. It ended up being really cool, actually, and I
was very happy to have made it in that way.
So as soon as you got out of New York, things started clicking?
No.
I don’t know if it was getting out of New York, but I did learn that
instead of bringing people out of their element into yours, it’s kind
of good just to go to their element. They’re more at home, and they
have all their toys, and they don’t have to be like, “Oh shit, I wish I
would have brought that one thing that would have been really cool on
this song,” or, “I know this guy who works next to me who I do all my
stuff with in my home studio, but he’s not here.”
Before we
started traveling, I was thinking about myself, thinking, “What do I
need to make a record? I want to be home, I want to not feel
disconnected from the world, I don’t want to live in a hotel room,” and
all this stuff. Then as the record progressed, I realized that what
makes me happy is good music and the ability to follow threads and
tangents through, and the people that I’m doing it with actually need
to feel more at home than I do. I can deal with being anywhere if the
music that’s happening is really making me happy.
When you
and Mike sat down for the first time, what was that conversation like?
It’s you on the songs, and sometimes minimal orchestration or guitar,
but it’s essentially you.
I didn’t think it through,
actually, which songs would fit which producer. Somebody probably more
organized than I am would have thought about that stuff a little bit. I
would, at random, pick a bunch of songs and send them to a producer and
then Mike was the first. He got first dibs on whatever he felt more
connected to, and then I would send the leftovers that he didn’t pick
and a few more, just to fill it out, because I had a big basket of
songs that I can pick from and be like, “What about this one?”
How many songs are in the basket?
Dozens,
I don’t know. A lot of songs. It hurts my feelings sometimes that some
of them are not going anywhere. I will wake up and be like, “But this
song’s not on it and this song’s not on it.” I’m going to have to
narrow them down into a record, which I always do, anyway. Right now I
have 16 or 17 songs, and of course, I don’t even think that fits the
length of the CD. I’m going to have to narrow them down again. Then I
send the producers more. Naturally, everyone gravitates towards
something that they like, or they make do with what they’ve got. I
think that a lot of the time, it’s not necessarily songs that one would
think. Just because Mike is more known for the Fiona Apple stuff, or
for the hip-hop stuff, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t also excel at jazz or
classical or all of his other interests, it’s just that sometimes
people don’t get to do that or show that. I think in the end, everybody
just kind of hung out and got creative and just made stuff up. At the
end of the day, I am playing piano and singing with my voice, because
it’s the only voice I have. I definitely would love it if I could sing
with some other voices sometimes…
Like pretend you’re a dolphin?
Yeah,
stuff like that. I do what I can to get out of my skin, but there’s
only so far I can go – dolphin, sometimes a slight accent change. Maybe
the next record I’ll learn some languages.
In most of these
cases, it seems like it's just you and that producer in the room. It’s
not like you have a big crew of people around.
Right, it’s
me, the producer, and the engineer, or just me and the producer.
Sometimes there’s some other people around, but it’s not a big
production. For the most part, it’s usually me and the producer and
whoever the producer has brought, one or two people, who are able to
play everything between all of us.
It’s amazing that you got Jeff Lynne. Your manager said it was the last Tom Petty record that got you hooked on Jeff Lynne.
Yeah,
I love Highway Companion. I just remembered his name from the CD
jacket. “Oh, that guy’s got to be really good, that sounds awesome.”
Everyone’s like, “Yeah, he’s also done some other things…” He’s really
amazing, really kind, and it was fucking awesome working with him. I
loved the whole atmosphere that he made because it was at his home, and
he’s just so talented, it’s crazy. Everything in that house is sort of
magical, because he is who he is. So I would pick up an instrument and
he’d say, “Oh yeah, George Harrison gave that to me. Step away from the
banjo, lady.” But it’s really cool, and he has his own way of seeing
sounds, I guess, or hearing things. He’s such an amazing writer and
musician as well as a producer. I think he came to production just
because he wanted his music to sound a certain way. So in that way,
it’s very unique, because he’s a musician first.
I’m sure there’s random people coming through to visit him.
Well,
we were kind of serious in our work, so we did have this really amazing
friend of his help me a lot on the record, whose name is Mark Mann. I
guess he’s a film score composer, and he does a lot of things with
Danny Elfman and stuff like that, but he had these really cool
orchestra samples and all kinds of really amazing things to play with,
and it was really fun listening to him and watching him orchestrate.
I’ve
been so hands-on with things that it’s really fun for me to just let go
a little bit, and kind of allow people to be who they are and show me
things as opposed to being like, “It’s my music!” I think that was
cool. It’s exciting, because he had a box arrive, and it would be a
case of beer from Paul McCartney, who makes his own beer, or something.
Fun things like that. For me, it’s the art that’s the most fun. People
are nice, but watching something be made, that’s really cool.
One of my favorite songs is “The Wallet,” and I’m wondering if it’s a true story.
I’d rather not talk about lyrics to songs, but yeah…I hope you don’t take that as me being anti-social.
Can we talk about any of the songs? Not lyrically, but what might have inspired you?
Let’s
try. I can tell you something about it. When I first played it outside
of America, I started wondering if anyone would know what the hell I’m
talking about and whether they have Blockbusters in other parts of the
world. It turns out that they do, and they knew what Juicy Fruit was,
so that was good.
“Laughing With” is really great.
To
tell you the truth, I’m really amazed. I worked with Garrett on that
with him in London. I almost didn’t put the song on any of the demos,
because it was one of those songs that when I wrote it, I thought,
“This could go both ways. This could be a really terrible song or this
might be good.” I thought it might be a very bad song. Then Garrett
said he really liked it and he wanted to work on it. I'm still very
surprised when anyone likes it, and the fact that it got a really warm
welcome by my record label. My friend Rosemary said to me that she
loved it. I guess it makes me happy, because it makes me see that
sometimes something that I’m not even sure about or think might suck, I
should still try and show it to people because it might be of some use
or have its own little spot in the world.
You said you were working on these songs with Garrett – does that mean manipulating vocals and coming up with vocals together?
No.
I meant just production-wise. I’m okay with people producing it now
more than I was before, or giving input on instrumentation. But every
song on the record, on any of my records, I write everything.
Would they say, “Maybe you should rewrite that verse”?
No.
No one’s done that. The only person that did that, twice, was Jeff
Lynne. On the song “Folding Chair,” it ends on a chorus, and it ends in
the same rhythm? Originally I had it end with this little slow-down
part, and Jeff just really was pushing for it to end up, and not slowed
down. He wanted it to go on a sixth. I was like, “No, it’s the Beatles’
note,” and he’s like, “No, they don’t own it.” He was right, because
it’s just a sixth. That was his suggestion, and I did it. Then there
was another suggestion that he wanted. He suggested a lyric change, but
I politely and lovingly declined, and he was fine with it. For the most
part, whether luckily or not, I’ve not had to change much. I think once
the songs are written, they are how they are. I’m much more open to
experimenting with sounds than actually altering a lyric or structure
or anything like that. I’m a control freak.
Can you talk about “Eet”?
I
can tell you something really cool about “Eat.” Mike brought a French
horn, and it was really exciting. It was the only time, besides when I
recorded that song for Narnia at Disney, where I had real strings and
horns -- French horns at Abbey Road in London. This was the only other
time where I had a real French horn recorded. That was very exciting.
As for “Genius Next Door,” I guess it’s sort of a sci-fi story. I love
how Jeff produced it and how the strings that Mark helped arrange are
in it. I guess it’s a spacey sci-fi. It’s a swampy kind of song, like
magical mystery swamp.
What is the record called ‘FAR’?
When
I was working on it, I was thinking a lot about the feeling of far and
what it means to be far, and the fact that every time you come far and
you reach your goal, that you’ve always been far from the place that
you’ve started, so that you miss it. You’re always in a state of being
far from something, and in order to get far, you have to leave
something far behind. I was also thinking of space. Who knows why these
things happen?
Do you feel like you’re living in space these days?
Maybe
I’m just realizing that I’ve actually been living in space my whole
life, as we all have. Sometimes it just hits you, and something inside
you changes and you start to see yourself from some other perspectives
that you haven’t yet. If you were a painting, you’d expect to see
yourself from some other angle or something.
It could apply
to how far you’ve come in the last few years and what that must be
like, looking at yourself from that perspective.
Yeah…but
thinking about that weirds me out. I guess it is true. God, most of the
time, I’m just like, “How am I even allowed to do what I do?” I just
get to do it anyway, and people accept it, and it’s very, very nice.
I’m just so excited. It’s been a while. I’m really excited to put out
new music and just let it go wherever the hell it wants to go.
What’s the plan this summer? You have a festival in Sweden. Will you be doing lots of festivals?
No,
I’m not sure yet. For a few weeks around that festival in Sweden, I’m
going to go do some shows in Europe and the UK and stuff like that, and
then hopefully in America. I think everyone’s just waiting for me to
finish this record. It’s just taken me a really long time, and it's
been stop-and-go because of everybody’s schedules, because I'm working
with four different people from all over the planet. But to tell you
the truth, I have no clue. I think it’s probably going to be a bit of
festivals and a bit of my own shows, and I’m actually just planning to
write a lot of music. I’m just constantly writing, so I don’t really
care where I am, as long as there’s a piano and I can get to my laptop.