Regina Spektor trained as a classical pianist in native Russia before moving to the Bronx at age nine. Like a ballerina at a club in the meat packing district, she could be screaming a punk song without belying her training. Like the folk art dolls nested together to protect the smallest, Regina’s emotional vulnerability is surrounded by a pop sensibility that makes the album shine.
The music is more like a collage of sound than a unified arrangement, as if Regina wrote the songs with a glue stick to bring together disparate elements. In “Carbon Monoxide” for example, she moves from singing “If I don’t got my socks on right/ they slide right off my feet,” to an extended crooning of “Come on daddy,” completing the effect of inhaling the chemical namesake of the songs. Some of the songs are more unified. For example, in “The Flowers,” an elegant and haunting piano staccato repetition clearly matches “the flowers you gave me are rotting and still I refuse to throw them away/ some of the bulbs never opened quite fully/ they might so I’m waiting and staying awake.” The song ends with a fragment of a Russian folk song (glue stick used here). In “Somedays,” Regina’s vocals are backed up by her expressive piano and a dejected string bridge that give texture to the not quite poetic lyrics.
With a voice that echoes and quivers interlaced with melancholy minor piano notes, Regina Spektor’s voice differs radically from most of the popular female vocalists out there in the post Nora Jones day. Does that mean she’s better than Tori Amos? No. She certainly doesn’t have the style or lyrical maturity of Tori, but then again, how many times can you listen to Tori? It’s nice to have another woman of the same ilk to mix things up. And Regina mixes glamour, kitsch, American, and Communism, maintaining the distinct elements of each and merging them without sounding like an overly touched up record. |