Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Consumer Guide Album

Regina Spektor: Remember Us to Life (Deluxe Edition) [Sire, 2016]
Let's speculate that marriage, motherhood, and turning 35--a big one that can sandbag you--are all on her melodically fertile mind. Let's assume it's been pretty sobering. Without being a sad sack, she was always serious. But her softer fans may be daunted by the steely class fable "The Trapper and the Furrier" and the fatalistic faux trifle "Sellers of Flowers," by quietly unrelenting five-minute bonus cuts in which an aged solitary celebrates New Year's and old friends compare their polar yet equally confining life paths--maybe even by her fond report that both her baby boy and his dad are better at dreaming than she is. So to help her dream more darkly, she enlists classically inclined producer Leo Abrahams, whose second piano is meant to ensure that "Obsolete" sticks around a while. A-