Gig Guides, Music Concert Tickets at Livemusic.fm

Regina Spektor at Hyde Park Review

Regina Spektor
Regina Spektor — anti-folk heroine, Russian émigré and all-round oddball — headlined the first night of the Serpentine Sessions, the three-day musical extravaganza in Hyde Park. Coming to the capital on the back of a triumphant performance at Glastonbury, the New York resident must be feeling at home in Blighty. As she walked onto the stage in a floral dress and sat at the piano, last night’s crowd were certainly ready to embrace her as one of their own. Quite right, too. Spektor is a singular talent with a charmingly bonkers worldview and uniquely expressive voice, which spanned everything from little-girl kookiness to the near operatic. Basing the majority of her set around her excellent new album, Far, the singer-songwriter was joined by a drummer, cellist and violinist. Pizzicato strings gave Folding Chair an offbeat quirkiness; a shuffle beat gave One More Time With Feeling the necessary bounce; and Spektor’s quasi-classical piano-playing gave Machine a sense of grandeur. Elsewhere, Blue Lips echoed Suzanne Vega’s Small Blue Thing, with Spektor cooling the incredibly hot tent with the icy refrain: “Blue is the most human colour.” It’s Spektor’s warm heart, however, that’s most appealing. With a smile that splits her face, the frizzy-haired singer fills her songs with playfulness and wide-eyed wonder. New single, Laughing With, pondered over the nature of God “as a genie who does magic like Houdini”. Elsewhere, That Time reminisced on the routine teenage activities of smoking rollies, reading Shakespeare and, er, rescuing pigeons. Spektor is capable of more than mere kookiness, however. A moving encore of Samson, which she performed solo at the piano, proved she’s just as effective at breaking hearts as tickling ribs. Funny, thoughtful and thoroughly original. Spektor is special indeed. By Rick Pearson http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/gig-23368160-details/Regina+Spektor/...

Was this post useful?

Yes No

43 out of 113 users found this post useful

Were you at this gig?

Yes

More reviews of this band

Reviews by the same author

Add a Review

Find a past gig

If you want to find details of a past gig and maybe see/write a review of it, then use this little widget.

Top Reviewers

  • bennyboy

    bennyboy

    Last post 25 June 2010
    147 reviews

  • bigcheese

    bigcheese

    Last post 18 March 2009
    134 reviews

  • johnbeyer

    johnbeyer

    Last post 12 May 2011
    94 reviews

If It Ain't Live It's Dead

Nothing, but nothing, beats a live concert. And nothing, but nothing, beats livemusic.fm for bringing you the latest gigs, the cheapest concert tickets, the fastest updates, the sharpest reviews, the juiciest music gossip and the wittiest blogs. So make sure you keep up with what’s going down in your backyard at livemusic.fm, the site that keeps you in love with everything live.

You can browse thousands of gig listings, concert tickets, venue listings & bands We have listings and tickets for Nottingham Gigs, Birmingham Gigs, Swansea Gigs, Newcastle Gigs, Plymouth Gigs, Manchester Gigs, Bristol Gigs , London Gigs , Reading Gigs , Oxford Gigs , Liverpool Gigs , Brighton Gigs , Leeds Gigs , Glasgow Gigs , Nottingham Gigs , Edinburgh Gigs , Bournemouth GIgs , Southampton Gigs , Leicester Gigs , Kent Gigs , Wolverhampton Gigs , York Gigs & the rest of the UK.

With Livemusic Presents, we put on gigs across the UK.

Read the latest music news online or log in to submit your own gig reviews and receive Gig Alerts for the Bands you are following.

These data sources were utilised to provide some or all information for this page.

Connect with Facebook