2008 Woodie Awards
There's Hope for Music, Yet, with Regina Spektor
Lindsey Dragun
Issue date: 9/11/06 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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Perhaps the best example of who Regina Spektor is in Begin to Hope is in her thank you section: "...this list was written late at night. On a tour. In a hotel room. By candlelight. In the 13th Century. During a war," she explains to those she might have forgotten to list. This quirky, detailed exaggeration doesn't encompass all of her lyrics, but it certainly captures the feeling behind them.
Part of a newly-popular breed of female singers alongside the likes of Frou Frou and Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor is a far cry from the pop princesses of the late 90s, instead falling into the genre labeled "anti-pop" for its sometimes soft beauty that's built more from a punk perspective than anything else. Her music is at times whimsical, but always heartfelt, lines of one great love lost, loneliness in a city, and old summer nights being crooned out by a capable voice.
She tends to rhyme her lines, or at least some of them, with a slight ridiculous edge on paper that has nothing but a poignant effect when heard. The first song, the single "Fidelity," sets the mood by starting, "I never loved nobody fully/always one foot on the ground/and by protecting my heart truly/I got lost in the sounds," with an upbeat, catchy beat backing the lyrics. In tracks like "Apres Moi," her already interesting lyrics fuse together with the phrases in other languages, a technique she has used throughout her album to farther express the emotions that she has already captured in English. "That Time" is used to demonstrate a person through their contradictions and quirks, "hey remember that time when I would only read Shakespeare/hey remember that time when I would only wear the backs of cereal boxes" the surprisingly rich lyrics say, creating a three dimensional character just in two lines.
Being a classically trained pianist, as well as a singer/songwriter, Regina Spektor is often compared to Tori Amos and Fiona Apple, but the Russian-born songstress' music spans a much broader range, spotted with everything from electronica to doo-wop, from Russian folk songs to Bjork. Her songs consist mostly of character studies, full of small details which fully flesh out a scene in a person's mind, often down to things like colors and smells that fill a room or cover a person.
The production of Begin to Hope is a relief after many of the recent releases this year, where the production suffered for various reasons and the art of studio recording was obviously lost on the people behind the CD.
Each song on the album offers a slightly different twist to her style, blending together into an amazing work of half up-tempo songs, half ballads. It's filled with sophisticated music that still manages to have a cute, feminine feel. Begin to Hope shows that, despite the strength of past albums and the acclaim her music garners, Regina Spektor hasn't stopped improving and growing into her music and her own, unique style.
Part of a newly-popular breed of female singers alongside the likes of Frou Frou and Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor is a far cry from the pop princesses of the late 90s, instead falling into the genre labeled "anti-pop" for its sometimes soft beauty that's built more from a punk perspective than anything else. Her music is at times whimsical, but always heartfelt, lines of one great love lost, loneliness in a city, and old summer nights being crooned out by a capable voice.
She tends to rhyme her lines, or at least some of them, with a slight ridiculous edge on paper that has nothing but a poignant effect when heard. The first song, the single "Fidelity," sets the mood by starting, "I never loved nobody fully/always one foot on the ground/and by protecting my heart truly/I got lost in the sounds," with an upbeat, catchy beat backing the lyrics. In tracks like "Apres Moi," her already interesting lyrics fuse together with the phrases in other languages, a technique she has used throughout her album to farther express the emotions that she has already captured in English. "That Time" is used to demonstrate a person through their contradictions and quirks, "hey remember that time when I would only read Shakespeare/hey remember that time when I would only wear the backs of cereal boxes" the surprisingly rich lyrics say, creating a three dimensional character just in two lines.
Being a classically trained pianist, as well as a singer/songwriter, Regina Spektor is often compared to Tori Amos and Fiona Apple, but the Russian-born songstress' music spans a much broader range, spotted with everything from electronica to doo-wop, from Russian folk songs to Bjork. Her songs consist mostly of character studies, full of small details which fully flesh out a scene in a person's mind, often down to things like colors and smells that fill a room or cover a person.
The production of Begin to Hope is a relief after many of the recent releases this year, where the production suffered for various reasons and the art of studio recording was obviously lost on the people behind the CD.
Each song on the album offers a slightly different twist to her style, blending together into an amazing work of half up-tempo songs, half ballads. It's filled with sophisticated music that still manages to have a cute, feminine feel. Begin to Hope shows that, despite the strength of past albums and the acclaim her music garners, Regina Spektor hasn't stopped improving and growing into her music and her own, unique style.
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