Regina Spektor

I discovered a new musician this week: Russian-born, New York-based Regina Spektor. I saw the video for her song "Us" on the DVD that came with my April/May issue of Paste Magazine (a fun treat available to Salon subscribers) and was instantly taken with her, as was my daughter. Each of us had "Us" running through our heads throughout the following day. The video looks like it was made for about $100 and is all the more enchanting for it; the quick cuts and cheap sets are fun and quite clever, and the resulting video is unique and charming to watch. The song is catchy and quirky; the piano and strings back her up in a vaguely classical style while Spektor's voice swoons and catches and stretches words out in odd ways, flattening vowels and adding others in unexpected places. In "Us" she changes registers from a tentative head voice down to a broader, more nasal tone and slides around notes or adds glottal stops for emphasis. She does so many of the things I was taught emphatically to avoid in all my years of voice training, and yet her odd and uncoached style is so fresh and so perfectly fits her song that I can set aside my years of instruction and just relax into it.

I bought "Us" (from her "Soviet Kitsch" album) from iTunes, and also chose two other songs from her "11:11" album: "Rejazz" and "Love Affair." These show a warmer, more supple voice than she uses in "Us." I hear shades of Tori Amos in her voice and music, especially in "Love Affair," but sung in a jazzier, more accessible register, with less shreiking and mumbling. (Some of Tori's work is delicious, but sometimes I find the self-indulgence tiring.) Interestingly, she resembles Tori Amos physically as well, but with larger eyes and brown hair. To see and hear them sing together would be esthetically striking, both musically and visually.