New Angles For a Woman Of Many Sides
By ALAN LIGHT[...]
She arrived at the building on a drizzly afternoon in June, just back from a promotional tour in Europe, where she took 16 flights in 8 days. She seemed com- forted by the sights of her hometown. Ar- riving at the observation deck, she actu- ally said, "Wow — the Statue of Liberty!"
For an hour or so she gleefully picked out landmarks, until the rain drove her in- side. Taking one final glance through the windows, she said, "It's just nice being able to look around and see things from a new angle."
[...]
Ms. Spektor enjoyed a new kind of ex- posure when the tough yet vulnerable love song "Fidelity," from "Begin to Hope," was used in an online video by the Courage Campaign, in protest of last year's Propo- sition 8 vote rejecting gay marriage in Cali- fornia. [...]
Rick Jacobs, the founder and chairman of the Courage Campaign, called "Fidelity" the anthem of the movement. "Minds are changed through storytelling," he said, "and Regina's song is a great story." Ms. Spektor said that she considers opposition to gay marriage "as embarrassing as white-only drinking fountains," and that the video is "the nicest use of my song ever."
[...]
"I've always been fascinated with faith and religions," Ms. Spektor said over cof- fee in a Gramercy Park restaurant, a few weeks before the visit to the Empire State Building. "Sometimes I'm sarcastic about it, and sometimes I'm in awe. Sometimes I feel very connected, and sometimes I feel angry at it. I don't have a stance or a mani- festo about any of it, but I'm perpetually looking at it differently, like a kaleido- scope."
In person Ms. Spektor often comes off like someone who lives in her own world. She remains close to her family and seems overwhelmed by the machinery of her ca- reer. Though she is a notorious perfection- ist with her work, she sometimes gives the sense that being a recording artist just kind of happened to her. ("My world is so weird," she said breathlessly while rushing to an appointment.)
Asked about the new album's title, she responded with typical expansiveness: "I've been thinking a lot about space. It was one of those slow-motion realizations how little we are, how far we are from ev- erything else in our solar system. This idea of distance started kind of haunting me. How do you go forth and accomplish things but not end up leaving everything you started out with in the dust?"
[...]
"I write a tiny fraction of what I used to write," she said. "My only job used to be to just write songs, and that was a really nice job to have, but only a tiny amount of people heard those songs, and I didn't make a living from it, and eventually I begged my parents to let me move back into my room."
With "Far" Ms. Spektor worked with four different pro- ducers and ventured into studios outside of New York for the first time. "I wanted a master class situation," she said. "It hit me that I'm not going to get to make a record every half a year, so I might as well work with a lot of people when I do."
[...]
Ms. Spektor thought for a minute when this was pointed out then said that while the shift wasn't intentional, it seemed logical. "Maybe I am skipping over the city and going from very personal things to the world, from internal experience to giant, far-away-from-space ex- perience," she said. "Maybe it's because I haven't been in the city so much because I've been trav- eling and on the road. Also, I used to be such a militant city-ist, but more and more I've seen forests and nature and oceans, and I don't know anymore if this is the awesomest way to live.
"I really thought it was the only way to live. I grew up in apartments, you know? I still get freaked out just being in houses."
ReginaSpektor.net is an old fan site dedicated to the music of Regina Spektor. This site is in no way affiliated with Regina, her management, or her record company.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
2009-06-21 The New York Times
Friday, June 12, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
2009-05-18 Spin
One of my favorite songs is “Blue Lips,” a slow building tune with lyrics about all things blue. Can you tell me what that song is about?[...]Well, that’s really hard for me. I don’t really think of songs in those terms. I don’t sit down with an agenda and go, “I’m going to write a song about…” you know? I just start playing a little bit on the piano, and then I start singing a little bit, and then it’s over — and there’s a song. Sometimes, very rarely, I can trace the ancestry of a lyric, and I’ll be like, “Oh, it’s a combination of that person I saw in the street and that one painting I saw in a museum, and that one movie I saw,” or something like that. But for the most part, it’s not really clear even to me. People think that if you can’t explain a linear meaning, then the song’s meaningless, or that you just put words together because they sound nice. But it’s not that either. It feels completely meaningful — it all means very exact stuff. I even feel like it’s super important to use “a” instead of “the” in some songs, you know? I’ll be moving tiny little things around in my mouth, and then I’ll get them just right and it sort of freezes — and that’s fate.
On “Folding Chairs,” you bark like a dolphin.[...]I love making noises. It comes out of the fact that when I started writing songs, I loved Radiohead, Tom Waits, and the Beatles, and they all have these sounds, these clangs. But in my early stuff, and especially my performances, it was really limited to just me and a piano. I have this natural desire to just climb out of my skin and become five people making noises, orchestrating all these parts together. I could have just sampled a dolphin, but barking is so much more fun to do.
The album is definitely all over the place. But compared to your other records, it feels more upbeat. What’s making you so happy these days?It’s so funny that you’re saying that, because I was like, “is this the heaviest record I’ve ever made?” I have no grip on reality. I’m so non-objective. Ah, the world is sooooooooo cool. Some of the songs are older than those on [2006’s] Begin to Hope, and some songs that are older than [2004’s] Soviet Kitsch. I have so many songs and I just try to collect them all, and glue them all together. And they span eight years. Some were written two weeks before the end of recording the album, and some were written eight, or five, or three years ago. It’s funny when someone will say something like, ‘Oh, you sound like you’ve grown so much, you’ve matured so much musically,” then reference a certain song I wrote when I was 18. Hey, maybe I was more mature then.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
2009-05-12 Entertainment Weekly
Did you have a different mindset going into record this album than the last one?Some of the mindset was the same, which is always the same: Just a really strong spirit of adventure hits me, and I become a little explorer person. I've got my backpack, I've got my water bottle, and I'm off to f--ing god knows where -- the desert, the mountains, the sea, touching everything, trying everything, following tangents and really just being in complete mad scientist mode. That's always the same, I think. But it gets more and more so with each record. I started out being a real purist. In the beginning, I was like, Records are only real records if they’re done all in one live take. Slowly, I was like, Well, I don't know if that's true. A lot of the records that I love aren't done that way. I think with this one I was letting go of trying to control everything, and trying to let things happen. Though I'm sure if you talk to some people they'll be like, "She’s a crazy perfectionist." But I'm less of a crazy perfectionist than I was a little while ago. [Pauses] Well, I'm still a crazy perfectionist, but I'll try more things without being like, "No, I can't do that."
Saturday, October 13, 2007
2007-10-13 NME
WHEN KATE NASH MET REGINA SPEKTOR
New York songstress Regina Spektor is Kate Nash's biggest influence. She's always wanted to meet her, so we made it happen. Just call us NME'11 Fix It
Normally at 730am on Friday morning in New York, you'd find NME collapsing into bed following the previous night's blow-out at Club NME NYC. Not this Friday. Today, NME has risen bright and early, with a brief to escort Kate Nash to Philadelphia to make her teen dream a reality by plonking her in a room opposite her ivory-tickling idol Regina Spektor with a licence to drink all the tea she can make, shoot all the adoring looks she can muster and say "Oh my God" as many times as she likes (which will, as it turns out, be rather a few times).In the madness outside the station, Kate's extremely easy to spot; her shining strawberry hair and red dress stand out from the blur of grey office donkeys like a beacon of indie style. On the train, she excitedly plays NME a continuous flow of tracks from the New York songstress back-catalogue, declaring every other one to be her "favourite ever" before a miserable old biddy stalks over and asks us to turn it off with one of the meanest frowns this side of a hungover brontosaurus.
"Regina got me through all the angsty stuff I went through from the ages of 16 to 18," sighs Kate. "Whether it was parents, friends, hating working at Nando's, getting my heart broken for the first time or being really ill, I always felt like I could turn to Regina. I first went to see her when I was 18 and I was so happy afterwards that people were asking me if I was on drugs!"
Such is the extent of glee on Kate's face as we arrive at the hotel where the meeting will take place, it's hard not to wonder the same thing. By now in a blind panic, she turns to a coffee-craving NME and exclaims for the 17,835th time, "Jesus, I'm so nervous!"
"It's OK." we reply. "Regina's really nice, y'know..."
"Yeah, but I'm such a dickhead!"
The very second Regina throws her arms room and they begin to chat in an almost sisterly way. Regina could pass as a distant member of the Nash clan by virtue of the red hair, striking dress and excitable disposition alone. 'Bless' just isn't the word.
REGINA: "Look at how we showed up today! Were wearing similar things and our hair is worn the same. It's not a slick style, it's more playful. I've never felt good taking a piece of clothing when there are 12 other exact copies of that thing hanging there too."
KATE: "Yeah, I hate that as well..."
REGINA: "And if I do I try to alter it somehow. Like these elbow pads - I made them out of socks just this morning. (To NME) You can tell that Kate likes to dress in a way that isn't out of a catalogue."
But, quicker than you can say Topshop, talk turns to music and they continue their hyper-speed bonding over Björk. Kate has a picture of the icelandic oddball during the mid-90s as her laptop wallpaper, while Regina recounts her delight at meeting Ms Guömundsdóttir at Scotland's Connect Festival over the summer. "We were watching LCD Soundsystem by the side of the stage and she said, 'I know this is not hygienic, but...' and then offered to share her wine with me. I was thinking. 'Are you kidding? I want you to spit on me!" Kate constantly carries around a pen and pad, writing down anything she's not familiar with like some kind of gonzo scholar. As Regina talks, she scribbles so furiously it's like she's being taught the meaning of life.
KATE: I've always had this desire to learn and to be clever, but I didn't get into university so I still feel paranoid about not having enough knowledge. I've got a fear of being left behind. so I'll do things like buy £70 worth of CDs of stuff that I don't even know what it is. but I know I should have them."
REGINA: "Well, at least your paranoia is fuelling your education. It's commendable that anyone is trying to educate themselves because, even now, I think a lot of girls are taught even by their parents to not get too many big ideas - to sit quietly and be pretty."
KATE: "Since I've become involved in the music industry I've become like a raving feminist! I'm so aware of virtually everyone within the business being male, and I got really paranoid when I was starting in the business and I didn't have anyone I could turn to."
REGINA: "It was the same for me. I was a real pain in the ass for the people who tried to sign me and I recommend you do that too. Don't just feel pressured or rushed into doing things - it's your right to take your time and find the people who aren't just drunk guys in suits."
KATE: "There was a time that signing a record deal made me want to jump off a cliff. But I realised that you have to be in it to fight it. Plus, the whole reason I wanted to be making music and perform is to reach people, otherwise I'd have just stayed in my bedroom..."
REGINA: "Oh my god! Are you related to me? I've spoken those exact words!"
As Kate will be the first to tell you, it's a minor tragedy that Regina Spektor hasn't achieved a level of stardom that reflects her huge talent. A classically- trained musician and a scholar of the piano, she moved from the old Soviet Union to New York as a child and began to perform around the city's countless bars, cafés and all-purpose shitholes while self-releasing albums at the same time. It was 2003's superb 'Soviet Kitsch' that converted a 16-year-old Kate to Regina's unique charm and she wasn't the only one. The press reaction was orgasmic and she even had the patronage of The Strokes to aid her. "They were the kindest people when I toured with them after 'Room On Fire' came out. The second ever time I opened for them, there were these frat boys in the front row and, because of the way I was sitting. they could see my underwear. I heard them slow- clapping and then they said. 'Good job Norah fucking Jones!' After my set. I ran offstage crying, but the band came up to my dressing room and started to teach me how to deal with hecklers. They said that I should always turn the tables on them, so by the end of the tour I was so tough - I'd go on stage smoking cigarettes and spitting on the floor and saying, 'Fuck you, and you, and your mother! By the time I went home, my mom was like. 'Who are you?'"
For a moment, the scribbling stops as Kate recounts being told to "get your muff out" by a punter at the Camden Barfly a few weeks ago - the same incident that caused the Duke of Wakefield (aka Ryan Jarman) to defend his lady's honour by slinging beer towards the emotional retard in question.
REGINA: "I hope you let him fucking have it."
KATE:"All I said was. 'Oh, boo!" I haven't figured out what to do about that stuff yet."
REGINA: "I would have said. 'Get the fuck out. Go upstairs, get a drink on me - tell them Regina's gonna stop by and pay for it - but just get the fuck out. I've worked on this my whole life and that's all you can say?' I would have let him have it."
It's a true Luke Skywalker/Obi-Wan Kenobi moment. She may not have written it down but you can tell by the look in Kate's eyes that a mental note has been made, and she's already planning future retaliations.
After our snapper engages the pair for a brief photoshoot, they exchange emails and promise to send each other countless links, books and songs, while NME even suggests that they collaborate ("Yeah, we could use, like, 30 pianos!" laughs Regina). But regardless of whether that actually happens, there's no doubt that Kate Nash has exchanged her distant hero-worshipping of old for a new, and very personal mentor.
"That was AMAZING," she squeals on the train back to New York. "Now that I've met her and know she's a real person. I think I can look up to her even more, but she still has the child in her too. I had a cab driver telling me the other day how I should always keep the child in me as I grow up and I can see what he means now. She's exactly like you think she would be from her songs - sweet, charming and so clever."
NME thinks those are exactly the three attributes that make Kate Nash what she is too... no wonder they got on so well.
We've got exclusive one-off Polaroids signed by both girls. For a chance to win, go to NME.COM/ WIN and answer this: Where was Regina Spektor born? A) Moscow B) Brighton C)Brooklyn First correct entry selected at midnight on Monday, Oct 15 wins. T & Cs apply. See NME.COM for details.
See your Fannish Inquisition questions put to Kate in an exclusive interview on NME.COM/VIDEO "YEAH, VERY FUNNY. NOW UNGLUE THESE TEACUPS BEFORE WE HAVE TO WRITE A SONG ABOUT IT..."
Thursday, June 01, 2006
2006-06 RAG Magazine
regina spektor
Story: Monica Cady
She’s gonna bang on that piano bench with a drumstick and giggle sweetly before going into a dangerous rant about a boy who’s “so goddamn young.” Her pouty red lips and glamorous curls may fool you into thinking she’s gonna sing some kind of Celine Dion top-40 pop number, but that’s where you’re wrong.This Russian-born Jewish New Yorker has the spunk of Tori Amos when she’s throwing a fit, the soulful heat of Fiona Apple getting heavy, the fairy-innocence of Björk, and the I’m-pretty-but-I’ll-kill-you flow of Poe. But that’s just scratching the surface of what 26-year-old Regina Spektor brings to her performance.
Her songs tell stories from various perspectives: divorcees, cancer patients and love-ridden souls. Whether the tales are autobiographical or not doesn’t really matter. Uh, and don’t ask Spektor because she really doesn’t want to talk about that. She prefers to think of these characters as just that, roles that she is playing and presenting. For that, she deserves an Oscar because the songs seem so personal that you’d swear young Spektor had experienced all these things herself. That’s where she gets you – making all this seem so real and sincere.
With her 2004 major label debut, Soviet Kitsch, Spektor proved that she isn’t afraid to take chances, and she was dubbed part of the East Village anti-folk movement. The single “Us” got major airtime on VH1 and was used in a UK advertisement, making Spektor a known name. Her intense piano melodies, off-kilter beats and angelic vocals partnered with honest, real life thoughts to make a powerful statement that she was strong, au fait and bold. Spektor even lent some beatbox-style ticks and pops, and made racket with everything from pianos, guitars and drumsticks.
This month, Spektor makes another artistic declaration with her 12-track LP Begin to Hope. From the get go, it’s clear that she has polished some of the dangerous curves of her last record. It’s something safer for conventional ears, but that’s mostly due to the glossy production elements. There’s still some raunchy punch for her typical fan base – little bags of cocaine, Wonder Bread and self- done haircuts populate the lyric pool.
While on the West Coast, Spektor agreed to take some time to e-mail RAG Magazine (our long distance bill could use the break), answering our questions, telling us what’s so cool about her latest project, and why she’d love for you to bring her some soymilk.
——Original Message——-
From: Regina Spektor
To: Monica Cady
Sent: Mon May 22 10:49:21 2006
Subject: RE: REGINA INTERVIEWWhat was the biggest artistic challenge you face while creating Begin to Hope? i.e. Did you feel pressure (from yourself or outsiders) to top Soviet Kitsch or make something different?
Good question. I think for the most part I just wanted to have a chance to really work in the studio. That had never happened before. Everything before was always done quickly and there wasn’t much of a chance for me to grow as a producer. I love writing parts/arranging music, so this was my chance to do it, but I don’t think I felt pressure to do it. If anything, I think I put pressure on others to let me do it, haha ...Press are saying you are not the same artist that emerged from the NYC circuit in 2001. Do you agree? What changes do you see in your music?
Haha, hmmm. What’s so fuckin’ different about me? Just kidding ... I think we change all the time ... I’m not even exactly the same person from year to year, so of course I change as a musician. It would be pretty horrific if I was the same musician today in 2006 as I was five years ago ... that would mean that all my experiences touring, traveling, living, watching world events unfold, listening to new music, looking at new art, etc. – all of that has not left a mark. That would suck. Then again, four of the songs on this record are some of my oldest songs, predating Soviet Kitsch. I’ve had people tell me my new songs are more mature than my previous records. If by mature, they mean old, then yeah :-) I don’t know ... people are too busy trying to classify/identify ... They should just listen, see if they like it.What about Begin to Hope makes you most proud or excited?
I just love the idea of people hearing these songs captured like that. The sound of it is amazing to me – quality and the arrangements. It’s my first time being able to see the songs fulfilled like that – so fully arranged. It doesn’t mean that these are the definitive versions, just that they are special versions.With Begin to Hope, in addition to piano, you incorporate electric guitar and drum machines. You played some guitar live on tour. At what age did you get interested in guitar and drums?
I grew up on the Beatles, so I always loved guitars and drums. But I think playing a bit of guitar myself came from necessity – you don’t get to have a piano around at any time. They are heavy, sometimes hard to come by on the road, but there are always people around who have a guitar.Why was it important to you to add guitar and drums to the record?
Well, not so much guitar. I mean there’s only two songs out of 12 with guitar on it. But drums were very important. I have a huge love for beats, drums, loops, all that. It feels so good in my body to have a beat. Six of the songs have drums on them, or some sort of machines.Your lyrics are extremely detailed, witty, fun and sobering. Some artists say their lyrics are afterthoughts that simply work with their melodies. How essential are your lyrics when it comes to developing your song structures? Do you develop the music so that it fits with the lyrics, or vice versa?
That is so kind of you to say that, about the words in my songs. Lyrics are so important to me, usually I write everything at the same time, though ... so it all kind of forms together. I guess there are exceptions. Hmmmmm … I don’t know if that was a very good answer on my part.You have compared telling the stories within your songs to being an actor who plays different characters. Some of your songs are extremely effective in this sense (“Chemo Limo” from SK). Do you enjoy playing out certain emotions more than others?
None that I have noticed. I think I just enjoy the whole thing – being someone else, feeling empathy, or just general exploring of their character. It all depends on who they are.You seem to have a great artistic relationship with The Strokes. On this record, you work with Nick Valensi (“Better”). What do you think it is about both your musical styles/artistic approaches that has led to these partnerships?
Well, even before I met them, I had such love and respect for their music. Then they took a huge chance and took me on my first-ever tour with them. That’s something no one had ever done for me ... just listening to them every night – their songs and musicianship are on such a level, that most bands can’t come close. The counterpoint in the songs that Julian writes is staggering, and then the band plays it with such passion and precision. Nick is like a guitar surgeon sometimes – so technically precise. In a lot of ways what attracted me to their music was the same kind of feeling I got from listening to classical music – that pulsing feeling, with very composed/intellectual elements.So many people dream of being a musician and playing for crowds. What is the best part of doing what you do?
I love the amazing amount of energy I get from the people who come to my shows. They are very giving, very respectful and open minded. I love that I get to make something and bring it to people, and they take the time to accept it or at least try to accept it. I am so fuckin’ lucky.To what do you attribute your success up to this point? (i.e. hard work, supportive friends/family)
Wow ... all of that ... most is from always having had amazing people around me – amazing family, teachers, friends.Do you set goals for yourself or just let things happen/flow?
I set hopes for myself – like I hope my music gets better. I hope I become better at life, at communicating, at helping people – those kinds of hopes, but nothing specific, I just go with whatever is going on.What do you do when you’re not thinking about or working on music? (Read? Recommend any good books? Watch TV, Play poker, etc.)
It depends where I am. At home, I hang out with friends and family. I love movies. I read books, walk around a lot. I love walking everywhere when I’m in NYC. On the road, it’s different. I meet a lot of new people. I stare a lot. I’m a big into staring. I visit friends I have in the cities I tour, and I end up eating a bunch of crap on the road. I spend my time searching for soymilk. :-)>Thank you for your time! You rock!
Thank you very much, take care!!! – Regina
Begin to Hope hits stores June 13.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Thursday, January 05, 2006
2006-01-05 The Guardian
[...]The singer-songwriter arrives with a large cat on her head. "It's fucking cold in your country," she says - then grins, yawns and knocks back a slug of Echinacea.[...]
We are two players meeting in the middle, one who finds the prospect of classical precision daunting, another who is wary of improvising. The tune we play, Consequence of Sound, has a split-personality, musically and lyrically. [...] One minute Spektor is gabbling, the next she is banging out a mini-opera. It's like being in an orchestra one minute, a playground the next. "I like it!" she says. "I don't ever really get to redo anything like this."
Who would be her perfect jam? "It's a good question. I wanna take it home and think about it." She's a fan of Tom Waits, how about him? "He does seem like the perfect person. The interesting thing about him is that he is an actor. One of my great Russian hero composer-songwriters is Vladimir Vysotsky - he was a great actor, too. In their music the different characters come through. It comes with that long-standing tradition of bards - you know, like Homer? He was a musician. The Odyssey was an improvisation.
"But even in improvisation you train. Like boxing or something. You go through hours and hours of rigorous, mindless repetition, so that in the moment you can forget it all and your body just knows how to react." She goes into a dream again: "You know, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."
Does she feel stronger on stage, being her characters? "Of course! On stage, you're smarter than you are, you're faster than you are. It's what all that training is for. It's your job to be a historian of everything that goes on around you. You try to take in as much as you can - it's a very emotional job because you have to keep yourself very open. Then when it fills up to a certain line in your body, it starts spilling over - the output of all that stuff that is processed ..."
Mary Ann Meets the Grave Diggers and Other Short Stories is out on January 16 on Transgressive. Regina Spektor plays the Glee Club, Birmingham, on January 25, then tours
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
2005-06 Spin magazine
Related: 2005-03-30 New York, NY | Bowery BallroomFull Spektor
Yoko Ono made a nonchalant exit out of New York's Bowery Ballroom after son Sean Lennon's March 30 gig supporting quirky singer/song- writer Regina Spektor. "I am very proud," Ono said with a smile, giving us a quick bow. Lennon, meanwhile, was on the balcony with fabulous friends like Elizabeth Jagger (daugh- ter of Mick), Harper Simon (son of Paul), and Adam Green (a Moldy Peach), singing along.We asked Lennon if he considers himself a peer of Spektor's in the local rock scene. "No," he replied with an actual snort. "Everyone is into her music; no one is into mine."
But Spektor's two-hour set turned out to be more than even her most devoted fans could absorb, so we fled to the after-party, where we saw Strokes Albert Hammond Jr. and Fabrizio Moretti. Spektor, who arrived with her mother, explained that the epically long set was an accident. "Nobody told me!" she sighed. "They came, they bought tickets; I didn't want to gyp them!"
By Elizabeth D. Goodman
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
2005-04-26 ChartAttack.com
Regina Spektor Plays Up The Kitsch Factor
Tuesday April 26, 2005 @ 04:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff
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
Friday, April 22, 2005
2005-04-22 mp3.com
Regina Spektor: A Steady Diet of Propaganda
Every so often a new talent emerges on the popular music radar that is so unique one is forced to take notice. Regina Spektor is poised to be that talent.
By Chris Rolls
Contributing Writer
April 22, 2005
Every musician dreams of a serendipitous event catapulting them from obscurity to stardom, and Regina Spektor was handed just that. In the audience at one of her performances was Julian Casablancas of the Strokes. So impressed was Casablancas that he invited the cosmopolitan pianist and provocative vocalist to open for the Strokes on a domestic tour. Without a label, a manager, or a lawyer, and just a backpack, Regina leaped at the opportunity. This twist of fate would soon land her on the doorstep of Sire Records, and they offered to put out her self-released _Soviet Kitsch_album. She of course said yes and is now touring alone to support her own music.We caught up with Regina while she was in Seattle eating a donut in her hotel room. She had much to say regarding Soviet stereotypes, her current love affair with David Bowie, and how she could really care less about what other contemporary artist she may sound like.
Interview:
Chris: I understand you've been on the road quite a bit.
Regina: Yeah, I'm in Seattle actually, eating my donut.
Chris: You've been to San Francisco before?
Regina: No. I've been to Seattle and to San Francisco once before when I opened for the Strokes.
Chris: That must have been pretty exciting touring with The Strokes?
Regina: Yeah, it was my first time going to the West Coast too.
Chris: Was that your first tour?
Regina: Yeah, ever in the world.
Chris: Really?
Regina: I know, it's one of those things where you sit in your room, and you're like, "Oh," feeling sorry for yourself, and you're like, "I'll never get to go on tour. Only other people get to go on tour. No one will ever take me on tour." And then, poof, you get a thing that's 7,000 times bigger than you'd ever even hope for.
Chris: And how did that tour come about?
Regina: Oh, they heard my music, and they really liked it, so they came to a show of mine and...
Chris: In New York?
Regina: At this club called Tonic.
Chris: So they came and saw your show there.
Regina: Yep. And then the next thing is, I heard, was like, "Oh, you know, they asked for you to be their opener." Whoa!
Chris: You must have been more than excited at that point.
Regina: I was so excited, yeah. And I had just made my record, _Soviet Kitsch_ and then, even, and so what I did, is I self-released and pressed it, and there was a bunch of copies, and then I just went on the road with them.
Chris: I'm really intrigued by the fact that you self-released the majority of your material.
Regina: Yes.
Chris: And then [Sire] Records swooped in and picked up _Soviet Kitsch_, right? Did they do that before or after you went on tour with the Strokes?
Regina: It was after…I went on tour with the Strokes I wasn't signed by anybody. I just kind of went with my backpack. I didn't have a manager or a lawyer, or a label, or anything. Or an apartment!
Chris: So that means that you had to pick up all the costs for your touring?
Regina: Yeah, I kind of maxed out my dad's credit card, and just went with it. I used to like, temp work a lot, in offices and stuff like that. And then it just got to be too exhausting because I didn't have enough time to work--I work a lot. When I'm at home I just, you know, I just work on music all the time. And it was just too distracting working all day and then taking the subway for an hour and a half to get there, and for an hour and a half to get back, and try and play shows, and stuff like that. So then I just decided that since I never ever made enough to pay rent anyway, and I wasn't going to, I just decided to quit all my temp jobs and just work on music. And like, I was still living in my parents--like, this was after college--so I just moved back into my bedroom at my parent's apartment in the Bronx.
Chris: At that was at SUNY Purchase right?
Regina: Yup…and then I figured if you know, after the Strokes tour I could just get another job and just work it off, you know.
Chris: How much time elapsed between that decision and then getting picked up to go on the tour?
Regina: Oh, quite a bit. I ended up making the same amount of money pretty much by...I used to like, tour New York City. I'd have my own, like, tours, you know, I would arrange them, like, you know, the Lower East Side, to the Lower West Side, Brooklyn, back to the Lower East Side. You know, sometimes midtown, really risqué. Can't really go above 14th Street and get away with it really. I mean, I played everywhere, like I mean everywhere. I didn't say no to a show. I played colleges, I played comedy clubs, I played [rid] bars, I played, you know. I don't know, I probably played people's apartments, probably have played people--I did play people's apartments. So it was like, it was just sort of one of those things.
Chris: And how do you think you were received at all these different variety of places that you played at?
Regina: Well, it was really funny. If you play a comedy club, people are preprogrammed to laugh. So things that were just, you know, in a regular show someone would just kind of maybe smile to themselves or something--or would be like, that's kind of funny--people would laugh hysterically at, at the comedy club. So like, you would just say something remotely funny in the lyrics, and there would be just like this huge roar of like, a laugh track, you know, like in a sitcom or something. It was awesome.
Chris: So it erupts while you playing.
Regina: Yeah, it was really amazing. It was really exciting, songs like "Poor Little Rich Boy," I mean, people laugh at my shows, at the lyrics you know. Like, people will laugh during "Ode to Divorce," or like "Poor Little Rich Boy" or something, but at a comedy club it was like, I was hilarious! But I've been really lucky, people have always been really open and receptive with my music, I didn't have to have a battle. And that's just luck, because I'd be writing this stuff anyway, and I'm just really glad that I didn't have to battle.
Chris: This has been great so far. I feel bad, I have to ask you a couple of questions about the, about _Soviet Kitsch_, if you don't mind.
Regina: No, I don't. Yes, go ahead. I mean, it's my record.
Chris: It is your record. The title is intriguing. Obviously the word kitsch to a lot of people sort of implies bad taste, or it's sort of generally reserved for tawdry artifacts or what have you. And I'm just kind of interested how you felt, how you arrived at the name and how you feel it applies to your music, or if it was just something that sounded good to you.
Regina: Well, it's kind of a combination of all the things that you said. And the thing is, when I came to America, it was a really fascinating experience for me to, as a kid, I went through immigration, I was 9 and a half, and when you go through something like that, and you get to a place where there's kids again, and they didn't go through that, you sort of feel really adult-y. I mean, I was already always like the little adult, like I think about myself...I was tiny. I was one of these little, little skinny tiny little short 10-year-olds, and I felt so grown up, you know. And when I got to America, and I would go to kid's houses and stuff, I'd be 10, 11, 12, and I'd have adults, like middle-aged people be like, "Russian, Commie, vodka," and they'd laugh. You know, Russki. And I was just like, so indignant, and I was this little, short elitist! I was like, what are these crude people talking about?
Chris: You had adults actually throwing stereotypes at you as a child?
Regina: Yeah, you know, it was a really interesting experience because it took me years to understand where it was coming from. I remember being at [SUNY] actually and watching this movie, this documentary, I don't know. Have you seen this thing called Atomic Café?
Chris: Yes.
Regina: OK. I was watching it, right? And there's all this propaganda…American propaganda--stuff that I was never exposed to. I was exposed to my own brand of propaganda, you know, in Russia. And I think it was the first time, I must have been 18, it hit me and I realized where those people are coming from with their stereotypes, because I saw what a steady diet of propaganda they had grown up with. And these were the iron curtain people so it kind of made things easier. But, I had a lyric, and it was actually a song called "Dusseldorf." There was a memorable beginning that goes, "In Dusseldorf I met a dwarf." And it didn't make it onto the record, even though I tried recording it, like 700 times, it just was never the right take, never the right thing. And, but it has that lyric in it. And I think that when I finished and I wanted a title, I just liked the sound of it, and--so much--and then I also felt like it would be a really good thing to sort of--like for the past--my whole time in America, I've been the Russian, you know. I've been the girl who came from the Soviet Union who has been on scholarships, and you know, who's this Russki, vodka-drinking, Commie immigrant. And I just thought this is what Soviet Kitsch stereotype is, and this is sort of like the wink at the image. But then I was hoping that people would pick it up and see that image, and see that title, and then put on the record, and then be like, wait a minute, this is just human. This is just like a human trying to make music.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
2005-04-03 New York Post
MIND GAMES
By STEVEN P. MARSH
* * * _April 3, 2005_ -- Forgive Regina Spektor if she doesn't play your favorite song -- she may not remember how it goes.The prolific singer-songwriter has written so many musical vignettes since she finished her latest CD, "Soviet Kitsch," that her head can't hold them all.
"I've written hundreds of songs, so there's a lot that I have forgotten," she says.
The charming Moscow-born, Bronx-raised Spektor isn't happy about this.
"It's terrible. I get absolutely devastated." Even so, the 25-year-old Spektor just can't seem to write a song down.
"I feel like I know it, and I'll work so hard and so much, playing it over and over and over again while I'm writing it, that I feel like it's there. How could I ever forget it?" she asks.
Even a lost tune leaves a memory.
"It feels as if you just woke up and you know you were having a really vivid dream and it's right there and now it's completely gone. It's a very sad feeling. With a dream, it's OK, but with this, it's not OK, because it's your work!"
She's trying hard to change, though, for the sake of her fans. She does work with a friend a couple of times a year to lay down rough recordings of each new batch of songs.
"I know what it feels like when you just want to hear _that_ song. Because of that, I have been working on myself to remember how to play songs.
"I know that I've written another ton of songs and it's really fun for me to play them, but I can also understand what it's like for that person" who wants to hear a particular song.
After graduating from the music program at SUNY Purchase, Spektor began playing at the Sidewalk Cafe and other "anti-folk" clubs on the Lower East Side.
She developed a style that tops classically inflected piano lines with vocals that range from sweet folk song to yelping punky riffs.
She got her first shot on the national stage by chance, when the Strokes tapped her as the opener for their "Room on Fire" tour last year. The band was turned on to her by their producer, Gordon Raphael, who was also working with Spektor. That led to a long tour, complete with talk of a romance with Strokes singer Julian Casablancas, something Spektor politely avoids discussing.
Spektor's first headlining national tour, which kicked off last Tuesday, brings her to the Bowery Ballroom Wednesday for a short stop back in the place she calls home.
"New York is home and The Bronx is like,_ extra_ home," she said wistfully. "Yeah, this is my city, in every sense."
Saturday, April 02, 2005
2005-04-02 WERS.org
Regina Spektor
INTERVIEW: Regina Spektor
PROGRAM: CoffeehouseApril 2, 2005
By Jinnie Lee
Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor entered our WERS studios in a casual yellow knit sweater and blue jeans with her curly brown hair falling naturally around her face. The petite and unaffected Spektor arrived in all smiles, despite the typical pre-spring Boston rain and dreariness looming through the station windows leading into the live mix studio where Spektor was patiently setting up. After much deliberation on which songs to perform, Spektor proceeded to rehearse and banter with Coffeehouse DJ John Paul on such topics like her Russian upbringing, her flourishing website, and the importance of non-commercial radio as Spektor is one of many live guests to have performed in our annual Live Music Week spring fundraiser.
Born and raised in Russia, and now residing in New York City, Spektor is currently on tour for Soviet Kitsch which allowed her to drop by WERS for a small Coffeehouse shindig. With much to say on her recent encounters with increased publicity, her thoughts on the Internet, and the process of being signed on to a major record label, Spektor offers a glimpse into her fast-paced world as a reserved and unwearied performer aimed for inevitable stardom.
I have noticed on your website that you have a link called Reginapolis, your personalized version of the game Tetris, which is pretty unique in terms of artist websites. How did that come about?
I was always thinking of the website and the Internet. I love the fact that we have it; we are so lucky and we take it for granted. If we had the Internet 20 or 25 years ago, there would have been no Cold War because you could text someone and be like “Hey, is this really what your country is like?” and they could be like “No, actually, it’s not.” Okay great, crisis averted! When I was not on any label, I would make home-made CDs and put them on the Internet and people would buy them in Croatia, the Netherlands, Japan, anywhere. When I would look at the addresses of these people, it would be so heartwarming. When I got the chance to make a website, I really wanted it to be a place where people can go to as a community. I have forum so they can talk amongst themselves and get together and it is such a pleasure to see it thrive because people are communicating across the Atlantic talking about different shows, politics and the different music they like. Spektris [the name of Regina Spektor Tetris game] was an extension of that. I wish I could put all my records on the Internet so people can listen for free if they do not have a chance to buy it or if they are saving up, whatever. I said there should be a game for those people who sit at their office, who want to go somewhere and play for 10 minutes and relax. So I gave them Spektris and they can play that on my website. The funny thing is when I first came to America and first found out about Tetris, it had Russian music and it was weird to me and thought it was so bizarre because I am from Russia.
It was a sign! So from working on the Coffeehouse last year, I know that we have had an advanced copy of Soviet Kitsch for about a year now. So why is the album being released just now and what was going on in the time between?
Soviet Kitsch was a strange putting-out process because I finished it right before I was invited to go on The Strokes tour and open for them. I made a whole bunch of copies and sold them on tour and self-released them. Then I ran out of those and labels started talking to me. And once labels get involved, you cannot self-release your album anymore and they won’t release it until the cows come home, as they say. Is that right? I’m so bad with American phrases! Anyhow, it has been a slow process. At first, Soviet Kitsch was going to be put out but the people at Sire Records, my record label, a division of Warner Brothers, were very cool and they did not want to just put it out so no one would notice it. They really petitioned for attention for Warner Brothers to put in the time and love into it, so that is why it has taken so long. But since March 1 st the album has been out so I am really excited. I have walked into a couple of stores and it has been there and it is so cool. I am on the shelf next to Britney Spears and Bruce Springsteen and there is Regina Spektor! It is really funny.
Speaking of opening up for The Strokes last year, I know you collaborated on a song with lead singer Julian Casablancas. Have you any plans to do more collaboration?
I have been talking to several musicians but I am so superstitious. I am like, “It won’t happen,” so I guess if it happens, you will know about it. But I do not want say it because if I say it, I feel like it will not ever happen.
That is understandable. So I assume you will be on tour for a while, but what will you be up to afterwards?
I am going to be touring for a long time. I am doing the national tour right now and then I am going to France and England. Then I am coming back to do more national so I will be doing that until the end of June, and what is it now, April? So it is a lot of touring. But after that, I am going to start recording my next record because I have so much material already.
And with your recent tour heavily underway, you have experienced your first couple of live television performances, notably on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” What were those experiences like?
I have just been learning quickly. There is no energy from the audience—an impenetrable wall—around the TV people so everything that you bring is your own. You have to bring all the energy in, literally, seconds to do it you do not have time to organically fall into a show or fall into a song. You come in right at the peak and it is really hard and different from real life. You have got makeup and lights all up in your face with big equipment. But I think it is also very wonderful. It will be wonderful once I know how to let go. I am such a sucker for direct human contact. I want to be in a club where people are close to me and I want to be feeling the two-way energy; it is what performers live off of and TV just does not give you that. But because of TV, you do not know where you are going to end up, you know? Someone in, I don’t know, in a trailer in the middle of nowhere can tune in and there you are as they are sitting on their couch and that is so cool. Conan [O’Brien] was very nice to me when I was on his show. You get there and someone asks you if you need anything. They try to make it homey and they make sandwiches for you. And they put your name on the door! I totally kept the label; I ripped it off because it was so cute that I stuck it on my bathroom door at home.
For more information on Regina Spektor, visit www.reginaspektor.com. Soviet Kitsch is now available to own from Sire Records.
Friday, April 01, 2005
2005-04-01 The Boston Globe
WITH HER MUSIC, REGINA SPEKTOR CREATES A WHIMSICAL WORLD FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
BY JOAN ANDERMAN, GLOBE STAFF
Glamorous as it looks, workers in the rock music trenches are perilously jaded, and frankly exhausted. There are so many bands. So many of them sound like the other ones. It takes some doing to get excited, and more often than not the rare happy jolt arrives unexpectedly, even against one's will. When Gordon Raphael found Regina Spektor, he was neither in the market nor in the mood.It was Christmas 2002, and Raphael, a record producer whose most famous client is the Strokes, had just moved to London, where he was coming off a busy year working with upward of 30 bands. He was physically spent and musically fried, and he was on his way to Seattle for vacation from verses and choruses. When a good friend invited him to meet a young Russian woman who plays piano and sings, Raphael declined. The friend pressed. Raphael grudgingly agreed to stop in New York for a day. Pleasantries were not a part of his game plan. "I walked into TMF studios, sat down, and said, 'What do you do?' " Raphael recalls.
"Regina started playing piano with her left hand. She was banging a stick on a chair with her right hand, and it sounded like horses galloping over a plain. She was singing this complicated melody in this classic voice but her lyrics were modern, like the Moldy Peaches. And she was smiling at me the whole time. I said, 'My God. Go get the microphone.' "
Raphael and Spektor recorded three songs that afternoon. When he returned from Seattle (where Raphael spent his so-called vacation sending e-mail messages to Spektor) they finished an EP, and then coproduced with Alan Bezozi, the mutual friend who had introduced them a full album in New York and London.
"Soviet Kitsch" was released last month on Sire Records, and it's easy to understand why Raphael responded so viscerally.
Spektor's intricate keyboard work, stream-of-consciousness songs, and intense, quirky singing will earn her plenty of comparisons to Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Bjork.
But Spektor, who performs tonight at the Paradise Lounge, carves her own niche: a whimsical, literate musical world inspired by Tchaikovsky and Queen, Hemingway and Picasso, free jazz and the Beat poets.
"I'm a messy girl," says Spektor, 25, who is sitting in a Soho cafe, and speaking on her cousin Marsha's cellphone.
Spektor is talking about her apartment, her approach to songwriting, and her life. "I don't understand a lot, which is probably why I have quite a few songs written from the point of view of a male. . . . Sometimes I have a concept. I seem to wonder a lot about death, and I also mention food a lot. I love to eat. Sometimes words just come together phonetically." ("Crispy crispy Benjamin Franklin" springs to mind. There's only a trace of an accent in Spektor's voice. Born in Moscow, she immigrated to the Bronx at age 9, mainly for religious reasons.
"It's very anti-Semitic," Spektor says. "Every Jewish person's passport is marked, and as soon as Gorbachev said we could apply for visas to go to Israel or America my parents said 'No way our kid is going to grow up in this.' "
Her mother taught music history; her father was a violinist as well as a photographer, but when the Spektors crossed the ocean they had to leave their piano behind; it was considered Soviet property. Regina, who'd studied since she was 6, practiced for a year on windowsills and tabletops. She discovered an out-of-tune upright in the local synagogue.
Thanks to a fortuitous meeting on a subway train, Spektor began taking lessons from Sonia Vargas, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music, while attending yeshiva. Spektor was so focused on perfecting her Chopin that the idea of writing a song didn't occur to her until her senior year, but then the floodgates opened.
While at college at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, Spektor started playing local gigs. She sold a homemade CD at coffeehouses and, after moving back to New York City, began frequenting open-mike events while working day jobs as a medical secretary and as an assistant to a private investigator. As her songs became "weirder and darker" and as Spektor became more serious about a life in music, she moved back in with her parents to save money, and became a fixture on the anti-folk scene, supporting such artists as David Poe, Ed Harcourt, and the Dismemberment Plan. She made another CD, called "Songs."
Then she met Raphael, who financed her album because "we had a good feeling something would happen."
He hired a string section and the punk band Kill Kenada to play on "Soviet Kitsch" a clue to the idiosyncratic nature of this collection, which includes such titles as "Ode to Divorce," "Carbon Monoxide," and "Chemo Limo." Track seven, "* * *," is a whispered exchange between the artist and her brother. Her characters are so vividly drawn that when he heard "Chemo Limo," Raphael didn't doubt that Spektor had four children and cancer.
His influence extended past the making of the album. On a lark, late one night during sessions for the Strokes sophomore CD "Room on Fire," Raphael played one of Spektor's songs for the band's singer and songwriter, Julian Casablancas. Casablancas asked for a CD to take home that night. The next morning he came into the studio, put his arms around Raphael, and sang one of her songs into his ear. Casablancas invited Spektor to join the band in the studio for "Modern Girls & Old Fashioned Men," a B-side to the "Reptilia" single, and despite the rather glaring aesthetic differences the Strokes took Spektor out as opening act on their North American tour. That's when the labels came calling.
"It may not be logical," Spektor says of her musical love match with the swaggering modern rock band. "But their music was immediate and beautiful to me. Julian was drawn to mine. A classical violinist can walk into a jazz show and adore it. Still, I don't know what's to come for me. It's a hits world and sometimes smaller things can get lost in the bigger picture. But for every million people that follow the hit song, there are fifty people who want music that will stay with them through their life."
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
2005-03-26 Pollstar
From Russia, With Love
Updated 03:40 PST Sat, Mar 26 2005
Most singer-songwriters pine over lost loves. Regina Spektor's was made of polished wood and steel strings. Spektor was forced to leave her beloved Petrof piano at age 9, when the curly haired, classically trained musician and her family moved to the United States from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1989."It was considered Soviet property," Spektor said during a recent interview in a café near her new home in New York City's West Village. If you listen closely to the song "The Flowers" on her major-label debut, Soviet Kitsch, you can almost hear Spektor whimsically ruminating on her long lost muse: "Things I have loved / I'm allowed to keep. I'll never know if I go / to sleep."
The nonconformist chanteuse is on tour in North America through April and has spring dates in Europe and the U.K. as well.
Like her music - a Molotov cocktail of lyrical classical piano compositions, indie rock crescendos, fuzzy guitars and playful piano snippets that sound like traditional Russian folk songs - Spektor isn't easily categorized.
"I don't really mean to, but sometimes I will write in code," said Spektor, 25, revealing a mischievous Cheshire cat grin. Her vocal style is equally anomalous. She tends to leap from the lovely, lyrical part of her voice to rap-talk and, on occasion, a raucous yelp. And despite the occasional self-effacing giggle, Spektor isn't shy on stage, either. During one recent show at New York City's Bowery Ballroom, the curvaceous singer swung an electric guitar over her shoulder and, before an awestruck audience that included her mother, father, aunt, uncle and cousins, unabashedly repeated the salacious lyric, "Someone is (insert naughty verb here) to one of my songs."
Luckily for Spektor, her Russian-born parents "speak absolutely wonderful English, but they don't pick up lyrics a lot, unless they see it written down."
While Spektor's parents might not realize what their daughter is singing about, they rarely miss a show. And while Spektor recalls very little of her childhood in Russia, she does remember countless family trips to the opera and ballet.
Spektor spent her formative years in the Bronx, living with her parents by day and playing East Village clubs by night. Several major labels attempted to court the burgeoning singer, to no avail. "For a long time, I was like, (there's that verb again) the establishment! I'll do everything myself," Spektor said. Until she realized she was spending more time standing in line at the post office to ship CDs than writing songs.
Indie tendencies aside, she does have one diva request. "When I go on tour, I make sure I get a keyboard in my hotel room. Otherwise I go insane," she said. Still, a keyboard does not a piano make. During a recent tour in Europe with the Kings of Leon, Spektor's piano withdrawal was so severe, she turned to the guitar.
"The only time I got to play piano was 10 minutes before sound check. At that point, it had been months since I had time to sit down and really be with a piano. I couldn't have one on the road because it's too heavy and too bulky, it was just a mess. So I had like, complete withdrawal by the time I was in the middle of the tour."
If Spektor had her way, she would spend her days playing and writing, not answering the phone or even leaving the house for days at a time. She'd also buy the cherry red Baldwin piano that was lent to her for the Bowery Ballroom show.
"I had nothing to play at home so I would go there and play. I fell in love that red piano," Spektor said of the Baldwin store in Manhattan, where she would practice regularly and became a regular fixture. "It's women-run and they're totally cool. They gave me jellybeans and Oreo cookies and hot chocolate."
Friday, March 25, 2005
2005-03-25 TheMusicEdge.com
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!!!
For more information please visit www.reginaspektor.com
By Shane Roeschlein
Thursday, March 24, 2005
2005-03-24 Time Out New York
Musical theater
Russian-born singer Regina Spektor is drawing a crowd with her dramatic performancesBy 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."
Regina Spektor plays Bowery Ballroom Wednesday 30. Soviet Kitsch (Sire) is out now.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
2005-03-13 The New York Times
WHAT I'M WEARNING NOW: The Pianist-Singer
[...]She owns four tutus, which she wears over jeans, and collects T-shirts with chil- dren's TV characters on them. "I have a strange appreciation for clothes be- cause I came from Soviet Russia," she said. "We had uniforms, and you got whatever your parents could get second- hand. As a teen, I was confused by the idea of shopping off the rack, where you'd see 12 of the same thing. So I'd go to thrift stores. I'd buy a sweater and Scotch tape stuff to it."
Here, Ms. Spektor wears a sweater from H&M with a silk tie she found on the Lincoln Center subway platform and and-washed, she said, "to make it crin- kly." But she is learning to appreciate finer pieces, too. Her tweed skirt is by Cacharel (a gift), and her boots are vin- tage Vivienne Westwood. "You can see the artfulness and thoughtfulness in de- signer clothes," she said. "They're very comfortable. When I first saw this skirt, I thought, 'I knew I'd meet you all my life.' " JENNIFER TUNG
[PHOTO] Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
2005-03-13 SFGate
POP QUIZ: REGINA SPEKTOR
By Aidin Vaziri, Staff Writer
[...]Q: Do you think Jesus is giving you the words?
A: Who? I'm Jewish.
Q: So it's definitely not Jesus.
A: I don't know. It's an interesting thing. I try not to think about it. I think some songs are like a dream, they just pass right through you. After you play them 700 times in a row, you still don't know where they come from.
[...]