If the album's opening
tropicalia twang - courtesy of the
ukulele-like Portuguese
cavaquinho - doesn't transport you
south faster than you can down another caipirinha, something is
terribly wrong.
From Russia, With Love
Loopy. Odd. Playful. It must be
Regina Spektor.
By Suzanne
Ely
Moscow-born Regina Spektor has a loopy way with the English
language. On the song "On the Radio," from her new album
Begin
to Hope, Spektor sings: "It feels a little worse/Than when we
drove our hearse/Right through that screaming crowd/While laughing
up a storm/Until we were just bone/Until it got so warm that none
of us could sleep/And all the Styrofoam began to melt away/We tried
to find some worms … "
You get the idea. The jaunty song goes on from this peculiar
beginning to reference a DJ who has fallen asleep and,
inexplicably, the Guns N' Roses song "November Rain."
Spektor has most definitely mastered the art of penning odd lyrical
couplets, a skill first made evident on her 2004 album,
Soviet
Kitsch. She was summarily lumped in with the Fiona Apples and
Cat Powerses of the world, which is no slag, but beyond a ferocious
creative independence and a feminist sexuality, the comparisons
fizzle out.
Spektor grew up in Russia, and she brings a strong international
and multigenerational aesthetic to her songs. She was classically
trained on the piano and studied Mozart and Chopin, but her father
also brought home black-market copies (banned in Soviet-era Russia)
of albums by the Beatles, Queen, and the Moody Blues. After moving
with her family to the Bronx, Spektor made her way to the cafés of
downtown
New York City. Coming up through the antifolk scene and
nurtured by bands such as the Strokes, Spektor expanded her
repertoire with the inclusion of hip-hop and punk influences.