2004-12-21 Las Vegas Review-Journal

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NIGHT BEAT: Spektor fueled by human emotions

My favorite album of 2004 is Regina Spektor's "Soviet Kitsch." I've listened to it at least 100 times since July. It's mesmerizing.

At http://MySpace.com/ReginaSpektor, fans post notes of devotion. One reads, "I once held the door open for you at tonic and it was the best moment of my life." The comment I favor the most goes, "You kill me."

Fans and critics equate Spektor's approach to other piano players or complex singers who came before her: Bjork. Tori Amos. Cat Power. Joni Mitchell. Patti Smith. Nina Simone. Janis Joplin. Sarah McLachlan.

Spektor has pure honesty of emotions. She's an impetuous and creative pianist, a clever lyricist, and a vocalist who cherishes each syllable as if it were her last breath. This goes for "The Flowers," "Somedays" and every other song on "Kitsch."

In "Chemo Limo," she relates, in her New York-via-Russia accent, a dream in which she and her four well-dressed kids (a fiction, she doesn't have kids) ride in a limo to chemotherapy:

"Sophie only wants to listen to Radio BBC. Michael sat on my knees and whispered to me all about the meanies. Jacqueline was being such a big girl, with her cup of tea, looking out of the window. And Barbara, she looks just like my mom."

Most of the album features Spektor solo. Its first sounds are heart thumps. Her piano bench creaks. And she inhales into the microphone. I got her on the phone several months ago to ask her about this.

"I don't like sterile records at all," she said in a gracious interview. "In some of my favorite (music), you can hear the humans."

In other words, many other musicians and producers edit humanity out of songs, flattening out frequencies and squishing down dynamics and breath.

"They're doing that with everything else, with magazine covers and television. They're taking out pores and skin flaws and everything. And they're trying to extract the human from music," she said. "It's not a secret that all these people -- they eat, they drink, they bleed, they blow their nose, and their piano benches squeak. It's supposed to be there.

"They're just trying to present what they think is a better version of themselves. And sometimes, unfortunately, it's a more bleak or sterile version of themselves, because it's the flaws that really make things exciting. To me, it's (exciting) when Thom Yorke's voice breaks. Or you see he runs out of breath. Or, like, when you hear that in John Lennon's voice, if he goes flat, and it's so good."

I could ""Kitsch" do her bidding. It is available on iTunes, in stores and at Amazon.com and CDUniverse.com, although officially, it gets a U.S. release on Feb. 8.

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Doug Elfman's Night Beat column appears on Tuesdays.