Recent Stories with tag regina spektor

Regina Spektor's Live in London concert movie gets screened in just 15 U.S. cities this weekend, and the Northwest Film Forum is the Seattle venue, with just one showing on Sunday at 8 p.m. It's just $5, so if you missed her Paramount show--All night, between songs, it had been "Regina, I love you!", "Regina, I love you more than that first girl!", and a baritone howl of "Regina, I want to have your babies!" Spektor, in contrast, traveled imperturbably from song to song, though the "babies" brought her up short. "All tour," she said, "it's been babies. I guess...thanks?"--you can make up for lost time. The live album hits on November 22. Consequence of Sound has the track lists.

The roar of cheers and applause that went up as Regina Spektor reappeared for her encore at the Paramount on Tuesday night was louder than anything else that night. All night, between songs, it had been "Regina, I love you!", "Regina, I love you more than that first girl!", and a baritone howl of "Regina, I want to have your babies!" Spektor, in contrast, traveled imperturbably from song to song, though the "babies" brought her up short. "All tour," she said, "it's been babies. I guess...thanks?"

If you were listening to her albums--Far is her latest--and debating about whether a live show was worth braving wind and cold, I can tell you it was. (Though if I had it all to do over again, I would have worn a scarf.) Spektor's ferocious talent puts her live show into life-flashing-before-your-eyes highlight-reel contention.

When she appears onstage, ducking and grinning shyly at the wave of applause headed her direction, you might not think "ferocious" is all that accurate or even appropriate. But when she's there alone on the stage singing "Silly Eye-Color Generalizations" a capella, full-throated, tenderly, mockingly, piercingly--over two thousand people are barely breathing.

Lyrically, she has a predator's ability to confound her prey so that you--little bunny rabbit, come for carrots--freeze right there, marveling at the silky verbal tricks. Vocally, she has very sharp teeth. One moment, she's a little breathy girl's bleat but with bounce, "It was so easy and the words so sweet", and then the mouth opens very wide and the voice gets very big and you would probably take a few steps back if your chair would let you. Still, even if she has you in tears or gibbering foolishly, she looks like she'd apologize profusely for having eaten the whole theater and gone to sleep.

Yes, she is acclimated, but she is a Russian bear. Do not forget this.... (more)

She likely broke your heart with "Fidelity," admit it. That vocalization on heart ("ha-ha-ha") seems skittering but try it at home. It's the singer's equivalent of an entrechat six. Regina Spektor seems nonchalant about it, the reinvention of laughter inside a heart.

Her new album Far opens with "Calculation," and here she lyrically, surgically, removes your heart and slaps it against a granite countertop. "Hey this fire, it's burnin', burnin' us up," she announces pleasantly. The album contains 13 songs that will tantalize a certain kind of music critic or fan with "meanings." If you like, you can start decoding the lyrics and the mystery, taking Spektor's temperature.

Strictly speaking, she has already come far. Born in Moscow in 1980, she left in 1989 when Perestroika brought on the peregrination of restless Soviets. Her parents were escaping anti-Semitism, so their next stop, Austria, can't have seemed in retrospect a well-researched choice. Italy didn't take either. Finally they settled in the Bronx.

You can read her lyrics as a kind of poetry which is not true of most--if poetry today can be too dependent on sight-reading, pop song lyrics lie there on the page, evoking nothing but banality until the singer interprets them. "Human of the Year" has a stanza that goes:

The icons are whispering to you,

they're just old men,

like on the benches in the park,

except their balding spots are glistening with gold.

First, that's a nice image. Secondly, just as poetry's description asks you a question about what you think you've seen, these lines ask a question about what holiness is. Maybe it is the ability to see the gold in bald spots.... (more)