Lauren Laverne: You're with Lauren Laverne and I'm thrilled to say I'm with Regina Spektor. Regina, welcome to the show. Regina Spektor: Thank you. Thanks for having me. LL: How are you? RS: I'm good. LL: Little jet lagged? RS: A little jet lagged. LL: Be honest, that's okay. Well, listen, thank you very much for joining us and fighting through the lag. You're here, of course, in support of the new album, What We Saw From The Cheap Seats. It's about to come out. How are you feeling about it? RS: Really, really excited. LL: Yeah? RS: Yeah. LL: I mean, what kind of album is it for you? RS: Um... I don't know. It's hard. I don't know. It's always hard to describe things, but I just... I've really been waiting for people to just hear it and have their own experiences with it. It's so hard when you just kind of... You know it's finished, and you're just waiting for it to come out. LL: Now I was thinking, when I was listening to it, that it has a sort of sense of grown-upness about it. I know it's not all new songs and some of them are kind of live favorites that you've done, but it seems to me that this record has kind of answers on it as well as questions. Do you kind of... How did you choose what to include on it? Because it is, as I say, new stuff, but older songs as well. RS: It's always really hard to figure out what to put on the record because I write all the time and then I make records only every few years and they can only have, you know, a few songs on them, so... It's one of those things where there's a lot of songs always waiting their turn. LL: Yeah. RS: And I think the way that things end up on the record is sort of a combination of... Sometimes, I'll even want to really badly put a song on a record, and then I'll play it and just won't feel right in the moment, and I can't really perform it how I want to, or... And then, other times, a sound that we're just pulling up... Or... You know, I'll just... I'll be looking for a sound for one song and we'll pull up a sound that just makes me remember about a song that I haven't maybe thought of for five or six years. LL: It's out there in your greenhouse. A seedling just growing, waiting its turn. RS: Yeah. LL. OK. I mean, this record... I know that a lot of it was recorded with you and the piano just live, singing and playing together. How much do you kind of write to sing with the piano, 'cause it seems to me like your vocal and what you're playing are, I couldn't really imagine separating them? RS: Yeah, usually I just write at the same time. It feels very, very interconnected. It's also really hard for me sometimes to... Even like the physical memory of the coordination of it all... LL: Exactly. What would you be doing with your hands if you were just...? RS: Fidgeting, probably. I don't know. I'm very glad that I don't have to just stand there and sing. It feels... I don't know, it feels like I'm getting to participate in it, and there's certain ways that I get to, kind of... Sometimes, something I'll say or sing will bounce off how I play it. So it's very... I feel like a puppet of some sort that's just trying to, you know... LL: Wow. It's all of a piece. Fantastic. Are you very particular about your piano then? I mean, how does that work on a tune? RS: Yeah, I'm not loving this keyboard. LL: Yeah. Sitting there in front of a Roland that you're going to play with us today. I mean, are you at the point now we can do the full Stevie Nicks and you're like, "No, just have a crane winch it through the window into my hotel room. It must be waiting."? RS: You know, no. I always... I mean, I always have a keyboard in every hotel and dressing room that I go to, just because because it feels really claustrophobic to be in the world when you can't just go and sit down and play if you want to. Now, I'm not always like... I'm not one of those people that was blessed with like a work ethic, so, it's sometimes... I'll watch crap TV and there's a keyboard sitting right next to me and I could be playing it and I'm not. But, it's just a piece of mind knowing that it's there and that I could go over to it, and so if I have jet lag, like I did yesterday, I could just be playing it at three in the morning quietly, trying not to disturb the other hotel guests. LL: In the lobby, did you go downstairs in your dressing gown? Please say yes. RS: No. LL: And ordered a martini and just sat there in the bar. I feel like, "Oh my God, she's good!" This piano... You've been touring a lot recently, haven't you? Just been supporting Tom Petty, is that right? RS: It was amazing. LL: Yeah. RS: Yeah, I went on tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in the U.S. and it was just so cool. I mean, first of all, they're just amazing, an amazing band, and all their songs are so amazing and cool to dance to and listen to, but they're also just great people, you know, really kind, and I felt like I learned so much from them all. LL: Really? What did you learn? RS: Yeah. There's just tons of... A lot of it is sort of just still even being absorbed now, because I think just seeing how they are in the world, their work ethic and their sweetness, and then just also being able to be so close and watch them play every night. LL: Yeah. RS: It kind of almost like zooming in on different players and watching, you know, how Steve Ferrone is drumming or all the harmonies of Scott and just, you know... And it's just how they are with the people, the way that they're able to bring all their songs and just how they build a setlist, everything really. LL: Okay. I mean, obviously they've been doing it forever. Was there part of you that was looking at their show and thinking, "Yeah, I'd love to be doing that when I'm that age."? RS: You know, I mean... I think it's... I mean, I definitely know that I'm going to be doing music forever. I picture myself being a little, little old lady and then just, like, keeling over the side of a bar somewhere at a piano, like, in the middle of a song. But I think that, you know... They write these, these kind of classic, big... LL: Timeless. RS: ...songs and a lot of the time when I listen to them, I'm just like, "How?", you know, "How amazing is this?" But, I think that, you know, everybody is different, and so I think that what I would... What comes to me naturally is maybe not necessarily something that could be, you know, in arenas like there, so... But, I just... I'm more interested in the journey itself, you know, like playing different size venues and different atmospheres, so I don't know if I'd ever strive for any specific thing. LL: OK, but you hope to be making music forever? RS: Yeah. Well, I know that I am going to. It's one of those things that you don't have to hope, I mean, you could just do stuff, you know. People hope all the time, they forget that they could just do all the time. LL: That's a good point. All right. Regina Spektor is with us today, and you're going to play for us. What which song are you going to play first, Regina? And what can you tell me about this before you play me it? RS: I'm going to play "All the Rowboats", and it was the first song that we made a video for and kind of released from the record when I was getting antsy and I just really wanted to share music before the record comes out. I don't know. I guess I'll just play it. It's hard. It's hard to talk about. It's much easier to play it. LL: OK, you can do that. Then Regina Spektor with us live on 6 Music. [MUSIC - "All the Rowboats"] LL: Regina Spektor, live on 6 music and sounding fabulous. Thank you very much for sticking with us, Regina. We've got one more tune from Regina and more of a chat after this. So, Regina, we were talking about the new record, and it's quite a few years now since your breakthrough. Like, Soviet Kitsch was your third album? RS: Yeah, it was my third record, but it was my first one that got picked up by a label. LL: Absolutely. So it's your kind of breakthrough. When you listen back to those songs, do you feel like you've changed much? Because, obviously, you started making music at an insanely young age, really. I mean, is it like looking at a different you? RS: Yeah, I mean, I don't listen to it, probably for that reason. It's so weird for me to to listen to my own stuff, even more recent things. I've had, now, so many experiences where I will hear something and it sounds really familiar to me, and I'm trying to figure out what that is, and then I realize that it's me, that it's... I probably have like the brain of a cat who just never can realize that they're looking at themselves in the mirror, and it... So, I just... I definitely feel like I change all the time, especially the way that I sing has changed so much over the years that I just, you know, I get this like grace moment after I'm done with the record where I don't start picking it apart yet, and I'm not cringing at, "Oh, I should have done that" and "Why did I sing that like that?" so... I'm in that moment now where I'm just, like, happy, and probably in six months I'll be like... LL: You need to make the next record. That's what happens isn't it? I mean, are there other songs that you can't play from your past because of that? RS: Oh, yeah. LL: You just kind of think: "I can't actually authentically sing that."? RS: Tons of stuff. Yeah. They just feel, like, not right at all, which is such a good thing about recording, and... I have, you know, I have a lot of songs that sort of happen in between records and then by the time I would be recording the next thing they just wouldn't stay with me, it wasn't ever going to be right ever again... LL: Didn't stick. RS: So, then, they're sort of the ones that fall through the cracks and sometimes I feel bad for them. LL: Oh, the little... Yeah, the little stepping stone songs. That's sad. I read that you were planning to go back to Russia this summer for the first trip back since you left as a kid. Is that right? RS: Yeah, because I'm doing a tour and I'm coming to the UK. I'm coming to a lot of European countries and it's gonna be my first... And I'm going to play two concerts in Russia. It's gonna be my first time back since I left in '89. LL: Wow. So, I mean, no pressure. Just scheduling a concert in there, is that...? I mean, that's gonna be emotional anyway. RS: Yeah. I'm sort of... I'm bracing myself, 'cause I... I already, I'm like... You know, I could see I don't know a flower on the side of the road and get devastated so, I'm starting to... LL: "Regina's not backstage yet. She's still staring at a flower. Let's have security over here." RS: I was trying to fortify myself for that... LL: Yeah. RS: ...and I... It's definitely a giant big deal in my mind and in my heart to go back so... LL: Are you gonna take your family with you? Are you going to...? RS: Yeah. My mom it's coming with me. And, it's actually funny because I don't have... At home I don't have in New York a TV or anything like that, and, so, I've been staying at the hotel and they have a lot of channels, and there's all these Russian channels. LL: Yeah. RS: So, you know, part of... It's partly jet lag and partly me watching, like, very strange old movies. LL: Yeah. It must be very strange. I mean, do you think that having moved to the States as a little kid gives you an advantage as a songwriter in that you're an outsider looking in? You know, you have that perspective when you've moved countries, and and obviously that's an easier place, or is it, to write songs from? RS: You know, I don't know. I think that, I mean... I don't know. I mean, if that was... If that was the thing that made you awesome songwriters, then, I don't know. The Beatles, they seem to do just fine out of Liverpool and never having... I think that, it's just... LL: But they were different. You need a differentness, you know, they were... Like, their mom... Their mums died, you know. RS: Right. That's true... LL: You know, Paul's mom... Paul lost his mom and then John had, you know, a similar kind of straight, odd relationship there, I think, and... You need a differentness, don't you? RS: I guess, yeah... And, so much of that stuff is... I guess pain is not quantifiable anyway because somebody could... You know, you can't really compare yourself. Somebody could have something tremendously devastating happen like in their life like that and somebody else could just have, you know, be bullied once and it stays with them forever, and it's... The the pain itself... It's not... You can't really compare yours to anybody else's, so I guess it's your own internal experience with it, and, they... I think you are right. I think that there's definitely something about being an outsider or an observer that probably helps with it. LL: Makes you good at that. Ok, so... And, also, you said you're playing over here, playing the Royal Albert Hall, so a London date, which is pretty exciting. I know you haven't done that before. RS: Yeah I'm... July 2nd, and I'm just... I can't wait. It's... Every time I've been going by there in a cab, like on this promo trip, I just point my finger and squeal, it's so... "I'm gonna be there!" LL: That sounds amazing, I mean, how much do you know about the show? Are you gonna... Is it all planned out or...? RS: I have, you know... I have... I'm touring... I've been... On the Tom Petty tour, I've been playing with my... with these three musicians that are really great. Mathias Künzli, he's drummer, and Yoed Nir, he's a cellist, and then Brad Whiteley, he's a keyboardist, and me. So, it's been the four of us, and it's been really awesome, so, I'm just excited to bring the songs in that way to the new audience. LL: Ok, listen, well, we wish you the best of luck with the gig, with the trip back home, and with the new album. Thank you very much for coming by to tell us about those things. What are you gonna play us before you go Regina? RS: I'm gonna play a song called "Ballad of a Politician". LL: Ok. "Ballad of a Politician" from the new album What We Saw From The Cheap Seats, about to come out, by Regina Spektor. Here we go. [MUSIC - "Ballad of a Politician"] LL: Regina Spektor, live on 6 Music. Thank you so much for coming to see us, as usual, Regina. Have you been cooking anything good recently? RS: I have. LL: What have you been cooking? RS: I've been cooking a ton. I've actually been... Well, I've always been obsessed with soups, but it's become one of those things where I've actually fetishized soup at this point. When I was growing up Russian, Jewish, and in New York, it's... my mom had made soup every day, and then I rebelled against it when I was a teenager, very stupidly, and I said, "I want frozen pizza bagels and takeaway Chinese and all the stuff that kids want", and then I got to college and I was starving for soup, so now I'm always, like, trying to make tons and tons of it and just have it every day. LL: Back to the soup. Good. Yeah. I just thought I'd check. Thank you very much for joining me, Regina Spektor on 6 Music.