2005-03-25 TheMusicEdge.com

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Regina Spektor: The Red Princess

Moscow-born Regina Spektor immigrated to the United States in the late ’80s as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the Perestroika program, a socio-economic and political restructuring of the Soviet Union that subsequently dismantled the totalitarian state. Now, it would seem that such a drastic change during the formative years would have a profound effect on a person, especially a young woman whose family chose the New York City borough of the Bronx for their new home. The simplest and most intimate way to take a peek into Regina’s life would be to put her new record, Soviet Kitsch, on full blast; her delivery is epic and fresh.

It would be practically impossible to try to sum up Regina’s music by drawing comparisons to peers or contemporary artists. Regina is something different, really different, and not in that hyperbole, rock-journalist or press-sheet kind of way. It’s the minor things, like her interesting vocal inflection and variable approach to songwriting (with both a piano and sometimes a drumstick on a chair) that start out simple and turn out to be monumental and defining. The first time her first single “Us,” gets into your head, you can’t get the internal stereo of the mind to quit hitting repeat.

Her music is void of ego. There is also a sense of danger that the percussive personality of her piano playing brings across when she is banging on the keys and singing; her songs are immaculate short stories about white collar slaves, lonely women, sailors, sinners and everyday folks. A singing raconteur, she’s like the David Sedaris of piano pop, with an ear for irony and a sense of humanity that could break a heart in one note and make you laugh in the next.

Regina hails from a musical family. Her father was a violinist, her mother taught music and Regina started learning classical piano at the age of six. When she moved to New York, the family worried that she wouldn’t be able to continue playing because the family had to sell the piano. Luckily, Regina’s father met violinist Samuel Marder, husband of Manhattan School of Music professor Sonia Vargas. Samuel had the Spektor’s over for dinner one evening and Regina asked Sonia if she could teach her. She took lessons from Sonia until she was 17.

Though Regina has played piano for almost her entire life, she didn’t start singing in front of people until she was much older. “I never sang,” she says. “I didn’t even know I could sing until I was older. My family would make fun of me singing. Sometimes I’d be doing the dishes and I’d get really into it, making stuff up, singing at the top of my lungs and they’d be like, ‘Hey what’s with all the wailing?’ So, I would mostly just sing in the shower and to myself, and when I was 15 or 16 more people would hear it and tell me that it was nice.”

There are some obvious differences between the musical world of Moscow and that of the United States, but Regina sheds some new light on her own personal experience. She says, “For me it was all classical music. We had records, went to concerts, ballets and operas. There were also these bards that were writing simple songs musically but deep and beautiful and poetic lyrics.

“My dad was a photographer who was pretty hip and he would get these great records from the Beatles and Queen and Moody Blues—records he would get from the Czech Republic (when it was still Czechoslovakia) and so he and his friend would make these tapes with this weird Italian pop music and the Beatles and We’d have these tapes floating around the house that I was always exposed to.

"I listened to a lot of Beatles growing up and I didn’t understand any of it, but as I slowly learned English, I started to understand the lyrics [and] it was really cool. People would make fun of me ’cause it would get to a part were it would be like, ‘La, la, la,’ and I’d ask what they were talking about and my dad would say ‘La, la, la,’ get it?”

When it comes to songwriting, Regina has a certain child-like wonderment that comes across in both her delivery and lyrical content. “I just make stuff up,” she says. “I consciously pay attention to life, read and go to museums. I think it’s a necessity and to make art. I think you have to always immerse yourself in learning. You can’t just go on the road and party every night and then get home and party every night and expect to call yourself a musician. But, as I’m working, I’m not trying to art-reference all these things that I see. I just want to make sure that I get those things in there.”

When Regina first started the process of tearing away from her classical background to start writing music for herself she says, “It was absolutely horrendous. I used to cry. It was never my idea to start writing songs. I used to scribble little lyrics down and do songs a cappella then all these friends would say, ‘oh you have a nice voice. You should write songs on the piano.’ But I was like, ‘no the piano is for Chopin and Bach.’ The first time I tried, it was so crude and so bad it sounded like this 'oompa - oompa' music. I couldn’t do the rhythm and it was a painful experience. Then slowly I started being able to change little things.

“Still, I think its part of the game, learning to push that one extra thing. It’s still really fun to see if I can get as dexterous as possible. Some people have some tapes (of early songs) and I haven’t heard them but I’m afraid to hear them,” she says with a laugh. In music, as any profession and art form, there is a continuous learning curve, one that is relentless and always challenging. Regina is always learning, even though her classical chops are top notch. “I’m learning all the time,” she says. "I’ll find one chord I’ve never thought of before and I’ll write a bunch of songs from the inspiration of that one chord. Because I’m so behind on musical exposure, like with Gospel music or pop music, I’ll hear something and the new stuff I hear’ll inspire me. I wrote this song recently that sounds like Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson because I was listening to that at the time and I don’t even know R&B.”

“Ray Charles said, ‘you know, you can never figure her out, you always find something new in her,’ (talking about the piano). It’s true. It’s kind of a lucky instrument because it’s so unnatural and tempered and so human and versatile. It could solo over an entire orchestra or it could be the most intimate little sound. It could be really percussive or really string like.”

Regina, like her exalted explanation of the piano, is tempered, versatile and human in every way.

Thanks Regina!!!

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For more information please visit www.reginaspektor.com

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By Shane Roeschlein