2005-03-24 Time Out New York

Musical theater

Russian-born singer Regina Spektor is drawing a crowd with her dramatic performances

By Alison Rosen

When people see Regina Spektor perform her idiosyncratic piano-pop, they either love her or hate her. Or they think she's a lesbian. "I've had so many people assume I'm gay because I'll sing a song from the point of view of a man,"she says. Gender is just one of many touchy topics Spektor gives the one-finger salute to on her sparkling major- label debut, Soviet Kitsch. On the first cut, "Ode to Divorce," she pushes bound- aries further, singing in elegant operatic tones, "Won't you help a brother out?"

"A writer can sit down and write a monologue from the point of view of an old black man up in Harlem," reasons the 25-year-old musician who was born in Moscow and raised in the Bronx. "Yet in music, for some reason it just doesn't happen. Nothing should be off-limits."

Onstage, Spektor is no less inhibited. She writhes on her glossy red piano bench, beats a wooden chair with a drumstick, and gulps, groans and hic- cups in an orgiastic way that's part human beat box and part rapture.

"As soon as I heard the music, I wanted to be involved," says pro- ducer Gordon Raphael, who met Spektor in 2002 through friend and fellow producer Alan Bezozi (with whom he shares production credits on Spektor's album). "She put one hand on the piano and played Poor Little Rich Boy' while hitting a stick on a chair and singing with this big smile on her face," Raphael recalls. "Everything about it riveted me." He was so taken that he cut his vacation short to start recording Soviet Kitsch, then released the album in the U.K. on his own Shoplifter Records. (Sire issued it in the States earlier this month.) Raphael, who also produced the Strokes' albums, played early tracks for that group's singer, Julian Casablancas, who was similarly smitten and invited Spektor to open for the band on their sold-out North American tour in 2003. But getting a rowdy rock audience to shut up long enough to listen to her sumptuous ballads was sometimes challenging. "People would yell, 'Freebird, and I, as the Russian, was like, What is this Freebird?'" she says, laughing. "The Strokes taught me a valuable lesson, though. If someone heckles you, you tell them to fuck off!"

Warming up someone else's crowds may be a thing of the past. Spektor has performed on Conan O'Brien, is scheduled to appear on Leno on April 20 and is headlining her own national tour. She's particularly excited about her upcoming Bowery Ballroom date. Well, excited and ner- vous. "I've opened there so many times, and I just can't believe I'm going to walk onstage and there's going to be my people there," she says, grinning. "I know it's going to be bigger than anything I can feel."

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Regina Spektor plays Bowery Ballroom Wednesday 30. Soviet Kitsch (Sire) is out now.