Regina Spektor, Avalon, October 6, 2006
By MATT ASHARE | October 10, 2006
ANTI-FOLK? It’s the confessional poetics that ground Spektor, and the jazz-inflected flights of vocal fancy that set her apart. |
Avalon was sold out for Friday night’s performance by the strange little Russian girl from Brooklyn with her piano, her charming vocal quirks, and, eventually, her unassuming band. And the show had to get under way early so that the Regina Spektor fans could be cleared out in time for the dance crowd. But you could hear the proverbial pin drop once the applause for Spektor’s entrance had died down and she’d taken a seat at her keyboard and begun to tease the riveted crowd with songs like the lovelorn “It Ain’t No Cover.” That is, until she started teasing her fans with those vocal frills that have become her trademark — the scat-like way she can take a simple word like “no” and twist it inside out over a long, drawn-out verse, or speed it up a broken scale until you’re afraid she might just break in half over the boy “who sits there smoking his breath away.” Spektor’s name tends to be mentioned in the context of NYC’s anti-folk scene, though she’s also been tied to the Strokes. (Their producer, Gordon Raphael, co-produced the 2004 album Soviet Kitsch that got her her deal with Sire.) But on stage at Avalon, the biggest influence on her quirky approach to pop seemed to be the years she’d spent studying jazz and the like at the SUNY-Purchase Music Conservatory. Because though it’s the confessional poetics that ground Spektor, it’s her jazz-inflected flights of vocal fancy that set her apart from your average folk singer, and it’s her command of the keyboard that distinguishes her rock band from any of the neo-garage post-punk that’s come out of hip Brooklyn since the Strokes first started making noise. Spektor also stood up to play guitar for the solo part of her set. And she saved her more straightforward songs for the second half, when her keys were joined by bass, guitar, and drums. But it’s her voice that’s right up front in the mix in “Fidelity,” the opening track of her latest, Begin To Hope (Sire), as she twists and turns the phrase “And it breaks my heart” with such glee that she almost seems to be recommending unrequited love. And it was her voice that made her Avalon’s reigning anti-folk hero.
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