An embroidery of whimsy threads through all of Regina Spektor’s work, a result of Spektor’s willingness, or confidence, to run with exploration, whether in story or sound. Her latest release, Begin to Hope, has her unique stamp all over it, lyrics blurring into stream of consciousness and near refrigerator magnet poetry and sounds growing out of a melting pot of musical influences. The evocative and mundane, references as varied as words floating out like holograms, eating boxes of tangerines (“So cheap and juicy!”), and a bit of Russian verse, appear delightfully natural, fitting snugly into Spektor’s versatility and apparent spontaneity. Still, running deeper is an open spirit, an empathy, in her vocalization of matter-of-factness and dreams, of life and death, in such easy proximity and melody.
Spektor is at her very poppiest in Begin to Hope, so far her most consistently accessible album. The glossy production and additional instrumentation on this release travel a good distance from the more freewheeling, even eccentric, personality and spareness on her earliest record-it-yourself-in-a-day albums, noticeable from the very first round sounds of plucked strings and beats of the first track. The colorful palette of sounds that Spektor has at her disposal — ranging from her darkly quirky New York anti-folk designation to her classical training and beyond to punk and jazz — takes a little time to emerge from behind pop clothing.
Along the way, we revisit an old song (a standout from the album Songs), “Samson”, a version of the Samson and Delilah story that includes Wonder bread and the unforgettable first line, “You are my sweetest downfall,” at a quicker pace, less ruminative than the original, and beautiful nonetheless. But it’s the gently bouncing song “On the Radio” where the newer sound and the initial spirit meld best. The piano is audible, and on the edges, Spektor plays with her voice like an extra instrument, echoing the piano, humming and making sound effects. The melody is eminently singable, the verses rolling through hearses and worms and Guns N’ Roses’s “November Rain” and the simple reminder that life is just how it is: “You laugh until you cry/you cry until you laugh/and everyone must breathe/until their dying breath.” It sounds upbeat and a little mournful at once.
Spektor’s embedded classical roots are striking, in that they’re integrated so well. The stormy minor piano chords in “Après Moi” could very well have been played in the mid-1800s without a blink, but Spektor transforms the sounds into her own. The shimmering, dreamlike “20 Years of Snow” is classical Romanticism and Impressionism but moves like a pretty snowfall, portraying a girl who’s “twenty years of snow falling… of strangers looking into each other’s eyes,” until the catchy breakdown. And in “Lady,”an homage to Billie Holiday, the delivery is blue jazz itself, while the piano remains a straight waltz rhythm, allowing the voice and the foggy saxophone to wail.
For old fans, the new sounds might seem like too much window dressing for an artist that can get by with banging a drumstick on a chair or nothing at all by way of accompaniment, as Spektor’s voice is instrument enough. But an honesty to her songwriting intuition and a newfound treatment of her musical quirks as song-shaping tools carry Begin to Hope, yielding substance and tunes despite its shiny, pretty thing packaging. |