Regina Spektor is yet another girlie girl promoted by the music industry for the sole purpose of appealing to sentimental yuppies and college girls in search of the next great female artist to gush about to their friends. The industry pumps out a slew of solo female artists con character just like her every year. Part of me wants to compare Spektor to Ani Difranco; the self proclaimed indie (obligatory indie reference) girlie girl who symbolizes school girls from the year 2000, college dropouts that never grew up, and lesbians everywhere. On the album "Begin to Hope" the quality OF character in Regina's voice is comparable to Difranco, but the comparison stops there. Spektor is Difranco for a more mature audience: the latte guzzling Prius driving 20 somethings just entering the real world and starving for a taste of the glory days from their distant past.
What stands out about Regina is primarily the character her voice exudes. It saves songs like "Fidelity" and "Better," which are among her strongest on this particular album. Bands like Cake and artists like Prince depend on extremely consistent or controlled resonance. Spektor is the opposite of that. Listening to Spektor I frequently find myself on the edge of my seat waiting for next interesting inflection. Her personality is palpably visceral.
Spektor's compositions lack creativity. At times I can hear the piano noodling for lack of ideas and the beat machine she uses on tracks like "Hotel Song," and "Fidelity," are embarassing to listen to. The missing creativity is made up for, most of the time, by her extremely convincing vocal deliveries braced by sometimes respectable production qualities.
The real jem of this album is "Apres Moi" which builds exactly the way an almost overproduced song should. The paino starts banging, the orchestra kicks in, a double bass subtly follows Spektor's left had, and then everything backs away only to explode again with even more conviction. Regina's voice doesn't exude the same qualities in this song. It's more pure and powerful.
Spektor's voice is heartfelt, the lyrics can at times be vapid, and the producer either doesn't know what he's doing or just doesn't give a damn, but ultimately the album is worth while. The whole production is carried by an extremely talented voice and one well produced song which is accompanied by a few slightly better than okay (but not worth writing about) compositions. Spektor is no Fiona Apple, but she may be in purgatory for musical goodness.
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