What We Saw From the Cheap Seats by Regina Spektor

What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, Regina Spektor's sixth studio album, came out on Sire on May 29, 2012, the better part of a year after she'd recorded it in Los Angeles with Mike Elizondo over the summer of 2011; she broke the news on Facebook that November.

Diehards knew most of it already. Much of the record is her finally putting studio versions on songs she'd only ever performed live; only "Jessica" was completely new, "How" and "The Party" had surfaced on stage just weeks before release, and "Don't Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas)" had already appeared in an earlier form on her 2002 album Songs. None of that dulls it: this is anti-folk that has learned to fill a room, and Elizondo gives it just enough polish without sanding off the oddness that makes Spektor worth hearing. "All The Rowboats" was the track that found its way onto the countdowns.

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