2005-04-26 ChartAttack.com

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Regina Spektor Plays Up The Kitsch Factor

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Tuesday April 26, 2005 @ 04:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

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Regina Spektor's first appearance in Canada should have come about two years ago. The singer-songwriter was supposed to have opened at The Strokes October 2003 Toronto show but had to back out when her grandmother died. When she finally did show up in early April, it was obvious that the appearance was long overdue. Her show at the Rivoli was sold out and people outside were literally begging for tickets.

For the young Spektor, it's a little hard to believe.

"I love playing shows and love being shocked and amazed that I'll get to a city and there'll be people there who pay to listen to me play," she says. "But I'm not that much of a road warrior, I'm definitely one of those people who wants to kill someone after a certain number of hours in a car. You get to a point where you just want to get out and run for the mountains. Just say, 'I"ll be back in five minutes,' leave and never come back."

The Russian native and New York resident has become a fixture in NYC's anti-folk scene and counts Kimya Dawson and the aforementioned Strokes among her fans. The Strokes even recorded a b-side with Spektor and insisted the track, "Modern Girls And Old-Fashioned Men" be credited to "Regina Spektor featuring The Strokes."

That marriage was born out of Spektor's relationship with producer Gordon Raphael, who recorded part of her Sire debut, Soviet Kitsch. The album is a not-so-subtle tribute to her heritage.

"When I got to America there was kind of a cliche image, people would find out that I was Russian when I was 10 or 11 and parents of kids I knew would be like, 'Oh Russia! Commies! Vodka,' whatever," she says, her accent still discernable. "I mean, you expect that kind of stuff from kids, but you wouldn't expect adults. Only later when I saw some of the films they saw growing up, all the propaganda against the USSR did it kind of make sense.

"So it was sort of a wink at those stereotypes, yes I come from Russia, from Moscow, from the U.S.S.R., I'm Soviet kitsch and this is what Soviet kitsch sounds like, it sounds like human, personal emotional music.

Spektor's live show is hilariously endearing. She tells stories, sings solo with either a guitar or piano and goes a cappella on a couple songs. At the Rivoli show, the crowd ate it up, amazed at the voice on the miniature singer.

This has, of course, garnered her comparisons to countless other artists who sing and play the piano. Or guitar. Or anything else. There are ups and downs to subjecting yourself to the music media, Spektor says.

"I used to be really upset about all of it, but then I guess you sort of grow up and realize that it's not personal and a lot of it is meaningless. I'll play a show and have people come up after and say, 'That song sounds like Billie Holiday, and that song sounds like Erykah Badu and that song sounds like Janis Joplin and this one sounds like Rufus Wainwright,' and you sort of go, these people don't sound like each other. This is all bullshit.

"But the nicest thing that came out of it was that I would find out about some of the people they were talking about."

For now, she's working on a new record and trying to figure out how to supply the demand for her appearances around the world.

"It's hard to tell when the record will come out with touring," she says. "It's like, 'When are you going to come to Germany? When are you coming back to Montreal again?'"

While you wait for Spektor to visit your city, you can check out Soviet Kitsch, out now on Sire.

—Noah Love