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Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody's self-set mission to bring you new and interesting music each week continues apace. This week we're covered in mud headed to the Pyramid Stage with a special Glastonbury themed installment ...

So the king of pop is dead. It's a great tragedy and, as a boy, I was a massive fan. No doubt we'll all now, and for good reason, revisit his glory days of the great three: Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad. This little weekly ramble will though, ramble on itself with a tipped hat and bowed head in the great man's direction but a look, as ever, toward the future.

In the spirit of other newsworthy and much happier events of the day I thought I'd pick someone appearing on stage at Glastonbury and, as I have just bought her new record thought I'd go with Regina Spektor who plays the Pyramid stage this afternoon. Her new record Far is delicious.

I discovered, by way of this very world wide web we're all on, this is her fifth record which to be honest took me by surprise. I only go back as far as her third album Soviet Kitsch which I thought, to my shame, was her first (long term fans of hers may now stand around and boo loudly and throw internet tomatoes shouting 'her early stuff was better!'). Fifth it is though and great it is too. It may in fact be the record that gives her the mainstream success she has perhaps deserved in the past. It certainly contains on it a contender for song of the year. Laughing With is spellbinding and a song we all should listen to. Go now and buy it for less than a pound from iTunes or somewhere and I'm quite sure you'll want to complete the album when you're done playing it on repeat for the next hour like I did when I first heard it. It needs no explanation nor preamble, simply listen and be smitten. It is quite devastating so I suppose you should be warned of that. There may in fact be tears.

Spektor's lyrics as ever are all tangent majesty dotted with delicate detail. In the song Eet she sings: "Someone's deciding whether of not to steal. He opens a window just to feel the chill. He hears that outside a small boy starts to cry because it's his turn but his brother won't let him try." Just astonishing. Such vivid detail of a world that is always held close to her chest and you're only allowed to glimpse at it. And that is essentially what is incredible about this record, it lives in it's own universe and you can visit. I'm very glad it exists at all though. We'd all be better off if there were more places to escape as strange and alien as this. "I'm hooked into machine" she sings and now so am I, and as dystopian as the place in this song (Machine) is I am somehow glad. Hook me up Regina.

A strange and wonderful record that, don't get me wrong, is also extremely warm and inviting when it wants to be but ultimately it tie you up in golden knots and you'll want to listen again and again as the depth of it is a frightening as it is alluring.

So, I guess I'm not going anywhere (until I wig out and say something scandalous I suppose) so I'll see you next week with something else I'll try twisting your arm to go listen to. People are making gorgeous and mind/heart-enriching noises all over the world all the fucking time. It's a joyous thing ain't it?

Big love from Planet Patrol,

g.x

Regina Spektor on myspace.
Regina Spektor's website.

Regina Spektor - Laughing With

11:37 AM | 27/06/2009