2004-04-18 Dallas / Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

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Working on Spektor

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By Jeff Guinn
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

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During the Strokes' tour this year, fans of the chart-topping band had to pay a hefty price to get into the concerts. So did the opening act.

"I was so lucky that the Strokes asked me to open for them," says 24-year-old Regina Spektor. "But I'm not on a label, so there wasn't anybody to cover my travel expenses. I got paid for the shows themselves, not the plane tickets or the hotels. Every day on the road cost me a lot of money."

So Spektor ran her credit cards -- and her parents' credit cards -- almost to the limit. Now back in New York City, she's paying off her tour bills and shopping a completed album to any label willing to let her stick to her quirky, multidimensional musical style.

This is one of the reasons that Spektor, a Russian emigre who arrived in the United States with her family when she was 9, has had trouble snaring a label: A leader of New York's subversive "anti-folk" movement, she takes offense at what passes for mainstream pop today -- almost as much as she's disinterested in more sophisticated, jazz-influenced artists such as Norah Jones.

Spektor very purposefully doesn't want to be "a pretty, folky songwriter," she said. "[Norah Jones] started in New York, playing the Living Room, which is about that kind of music. I've played there, but mostly I've played the Sidewalk Cafe, where the music isn't so much formula. When I listen to Norah's music, there's nothing there that surprises me."

Spektor, more than anything, wants to be surprised by music -- and believes that real music fans do, too. She figures she just has to keep plugging till they find her.

"You have to be protective about what you do," she said. "I want really intelligent lyrics and, even if I'm not writing actual punk songs, at least songs with a punk attitude. I want songs that surprise you, songs that sometimes are purposefully annoying."

The tunes on her third, and latest, self-published album, Soviet Kitsch, reflect that ambition. Each song, often driven only by Spektor's piano and her amazing, now-a-growl-now-a-croon voice, has three or four distinct sections that graft to form storytelling wholes. Ode to Divorce finds an aggrieved party suggesting she be broken up into small pieces and devoured by a former spouse ("Now I'm behind your tonsils/Peeking over your molars"); in Us, blissful lovers have a statue erected in their honor but discover that the statue's noses are rusting, just as their real-life love is beginning to fall apart.

This is music-making that just isn't being done these days -- at least not on Top 40 radio, which might have been one of the reasons she occasionally got a hostile reception when opening for the Strokes. She was invited on the tour after a member of the band's management heard some of her songs and introduced her to the group.

"Obviously, the people who buy tickets to a Strokes show want to hear them and not somebody else," Spektor said. "I got tougher toward the end of the tour, but a couple of nights, I ran offstage when I was done playing so nobody would see me cry. A more experienced performer wouldn't take it personally. Now, obviously, I want to tour on my own, and I hope if I get on the right label that will happen pretty soon."

Another longed-for moment has already arrived; Spektor has moved out of her parents' house.

"I lived there with them because I just had to," Spektor said. "It's tough making a living as a musician without a label. They live in the Bronx, most of my shows are on the lower East Side, so I'd always have to worry about getting home after I was done. Now I've got a little place of my own and it's great, and I can only afford it because a friend of mine hooked me up with a super break on the rent."

While she waits for a label deal, Spektor reminds herself "that I've been pretty lucky so far, and once I get that label support I can do even more. And when I do tour it'll be exciting, even if there are just 15 people there -- because they came to see me, not another band."

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Jeff Guinn, (817) 390-7720 jguinn@star-telegram.com