Every morning, for a little while, Sienna Spiro imagined someone waiting outside her New York apartment. He had said he would visit. He never did. That is the story she gives behind “Great Expectation.” A promise has turned into a daily ritual. Even the disappointment has a routine.
Visitor arrived on Capitol on July 3, with Omer Fedi as executive producer. Its ten-song standard edition puts Great Expectation beside Die on This Hill, The Visitor and You Stole the Show. Spiro has described being so frightened of relationships ending that she sometimes avoids beginning them. The unrealised visit gives that fear a particular person and place.
Hot Press’s Caroline Kelly praised Spiro’s singing while finding parts of the production excessively polished. That distinction matters for a song about an awkward private hope. An arrangement can give a confession scale, but it can also make it appear more settled than the situation described. Great Expectation begins with someone who kept expecting a promise to be honoured.
The deluxe edition adds an acoustic Die on This Hill alongside the earlier Maybe, providing a different setting for the voice Kelly admired. Great Expectation leaves the more lasting problem to its story: imagining the visitor outside, morning after morning. Spiro has supplied a plain, embarrassing detail that no size of arrangement can make dignified. The fact that she kept hoping is the admission.