Regina Spektor | Edit | Kelly Clarkson-esque | New York

On Spektor's latest album, she has added­ flourishes of electric guitar and drum ­machines to her piano compositions, bearing out her rock and punk persuasions. "Edit" is perhaps the album's most obvious synthesis of classic and current. The song, mixing Spektor's warm voice and ornamental piano passages, has the same choppy and repetitive cadence, skittering beat, and electronic blips as Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place."

Alternatively, "Apres Moi" opens with a sweep of melodramatic piano and a Weimar­-era cabaret mood, but there's a Björk-like oddity to Spektor's vocal delivery. She dresses up phrases with hiccups and grunts and draws out a word like yours with an affected bridge-and-tunnel accent. Likewise, on "Better," a vaguely Kelly Clarkson-esque anthem, Spektor repeats the title, and with each pronunciation, the word morphs from something like "bettal," (Russian accent?) to "betta" (New York accent?, and finally "better."

Spektor's dissection of the English language and Dr. Seuss-like playfulness with words are just a few of the oral tricks in the singer's bag. Spektor also utilizes her voice as instrument in a way not heard or accomplished since Björk's groundbreaking album, Medúlla. On the whimsical "Fidelity," Spektor sings: "I hear in my mind all this music/And it breaks my he-ah-ah-ah-ah-heart" - which has the effect of an aural exclamation point.

There is a messiness to the compositions - some thoughts aren't fully formed and words are left unsaid. Some listeners who like their music in genre-specific packages might bristle at this artist's idiosyncrasies. But for the adventurous and open-minded, the trip down Regina Spektor's rabbit hole is a uniquely good time.

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