2004-04-09 Washington Square News

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From Russia with love

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by Vicky U Lee
STAFF WRITER

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New York's best unsigned singer-songwriter has lost her voice.

After recently celebrating her 24th birthday, Regina Spektor woke up unable to make a peep - but with good reason to make merry. Though still relatively unknown, the talented Spektor has been generating quite a buzz lately. In the past few months, she's been featured in NME magazine and on National Public Radio. Add to that the fact that 2004 is the Year of the Monkey - her personal Chinese astrological sign - and you've got quite the fête at hand.

As the loss of her voice was the latest and greatest of many scheduling obstacles, we agreed to an e-mail interview.

Generally dreaded by artists and journalists alike, an e-mail interview has one benefit: the opportunity to observe how someone turns creative spelling into a written "voice" - Spektor's typing calls to mind her stage banter, which borders on cutesy but still comes off as genuine.

As for the less purposeful spelling errors: she's a musician by trade, not a spelling bee champion. There's a reason why she can spell "Tchaikovsky" but not "maintenance." Nonetheless, listening to her sing at the piano, one can't help but be spellbound.

While developing her unique piano-pop sound in the Lower East Side's anti-folk scene at venues like Sidewalk Cafe and the Living Room, the Moscow-born, Bronx-bred and classically-trained Spektor found a fan in Gordon Raphael, producer of both of the Strokes' major label efforts.

Raphael, in turn, introduced her music to the Strokes, and voilà: they offered her the opening spot on their fall 2003 U.S. tour. Following the Strokes' tour, Spektor spent a month opening for Kings of Leon in Europe. How did she spend her first day of 2004? In Las Vegas playing a New Year's show, sharing a bill once more with the two bands.

Granted, hipness by association is only so valuable. But Regina Spektor warrants the buzz. She is one of the few talents whose lyrics match the brilliance of her musical composition.

Like Adam Green, but better, Spektor can often catch you off guard as you listen intently for the next word, unexpectedly drawing out the laughter hidden behind your newyorkais apathetic composure. She has a command of musical structures, of rhythms, of the infinite possibilities - and consequences - of sounds and silences, that many pop artists never know.

Spektor began to play classical piano at age 6, but her studies were cut short by her family's departure from Russia, then still the Soviet Union. Once the family had settled in the Bronx, Spektor serendipitously met a Manhattan School of Music professor, Sonia Vargas.

After playing with Vargas' four cats and two dogs, Spektor asked Vargas to be her teacher - much to the chagrin of Spektor's mother, who knew the family couldn't afford the lessons. Vargas cheerfully agreed to teach Spektor for free even though she "didn't even know English that well and had no piano!"

Thriving on the creative energy at SUNY at Purchase's music conservatory, Spektor completed and released her first album, 11:11, by graduation.

Jazz and blues clearly influenced the 12-song LP. An upright bass plays rhythm games as Spektor slides and bends her voice on tracks like "rejazz," and the heavy pounding of tinny chords in "Back of a truck" drags listeners through a detached narrative until the blues she observes in others become her own.

But after spending more time with the music of Tom Waits, Radiohead and Björk, Regina resolved to leave imitations of Billie Holiday behind and concentrate on hunting down her own style.

Spektor wrote that while "many early [songs] are cringe worthy," for her, songwriting is "evolving ... among other things," a constant process that has carried her sound from her "prenataly" deep classical roots through jazz, blues and folk to her current musical singularity, where every word, every note, every silence serves to tell her songs' stories.

By her count, she has written upwards of 200 songs, though she acknowledged that "not all are good/ever performed" and "many are lost and forgotten." With a different set list at almost every live show, she has performed around 90 or 100 songs since she first started to write.

"The new one is always the brief favorite, whatever it is ... so my next song will be, and now my last one is ... but i go round and round, i love a song, then return to it and fall in love again, i definately feel responsible towards them like you would towards a child, no matter how talented it is/how smart it is/ how it looks - you care for it and hope it does the best with what it has."

Her "kidz" range in personality from carnivorous murderesses ("Marry Ann") to flirtatious pickles ("Reading Time with Pickle"). And there are, of course, some that are personal ("Patron Saint," "Samson"). But as with all art, she can only speculate about their significance, insisting her ideas "are as good as anyones."

Spektor followed 11:11 with Songs and then Soviet Kitsch. Both provide audiences with a better idea of where Spektor is directing her sound, though it seems unlikely she'd ever limit herself to any genre. Songs includes a butterfly peddler's lament, "Aching to Pupate"; a nod to Mozart's Requiem, "Lacrimosa"; and closes with a very upbeat plea to her French lover, "Ne me quitte pas."

Soviet Kitsch highlights the totally punked out "Your Honor," introduced by Spektor's younger brother, Bear. And yes, that is his real first name. As if Spektor weren't a cool enough last name as it is.

She sandwiches her punk-rock moment between "Ode to Divorce," a melodic introduction reminiscent of Romantic composer Claude Debussy, and the melancholy "Somedays," with a smattering of piano-pop in-between.

Most recently, Spektor contributed to the B-side of the Strokes' latest single, "Reptilia." "Modern Girls & Old-Fashioned Men" is a rock duet, somewhat of a rarity in music today. But Spektor has brought something different to the Strokes' disappointingly stagnant sound with her vocals against Casablancas' in the Strokes' first noteworthy B-side.

As for the next album, she cited David Bowie as a major influence. One can only hope to see the polished production that would kick her songs up from impressive to glorious pop.

The last question of the e-mail interview asked Spektor when we could expect the next album.

Spektor's reply was only: "???????????????????????????????????????????"

And I swear I did not delete or add a single question mark. •