How She Asks It

Regina Spektor has always written songs that feel like they’re happening in real time—piano and voice doing something slightly off-center, a melody that refuses to resolve in the obvious place. "How," from What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, does that thing she does where the simplest question carries all the weight. It’s a quieter track in a quieter album, which for Spektor still means it’s more emotionally strange than most people’s best work.