WARNING: Fanboy loves Regina Spektor

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Lady Steed bought me this cd for Christmas (and you should click on the picture and buy your own copy) (or, even better, click here and start listening now) and I'm listening to it now and I just can't get over how much I love it.

(I can wait while you make the purchase and come back.)

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Now, I loved Begin to Hope too and I wasn't sure this album could be as good and therefore good enough to bother, but boy was I wrong. Besides the fact that she has a great voice and her music is charmingly idiosyncratic, she is a marvelous lyricist. I've been inspired by her before, but I want to share a couple more lines now from the new album that strike me as brilliant and imminently useful. Here's the first, from "Blue Lips"

Blue lips Blue veins Blue, the color of our planet from far, far away

I don't want to discuss it. I just want to let it stand on its own.

Now, lyrics generally don't read well and "Laughing With" is an example of that. The multiple repetitions don't work well as poetry once the music is stripped away. But this shows me that, in fact, in their partnership with music, lyrics can accomplish some effects more adeptly than poetry can. So while you're welcome to click that last link and read it and note the clever way she builds to a moment that's my favorite musical twist on the character of God in years, you won't get the same effect unless you listen to it.

Lady Steed will be the first to tell you that I am Not Good at understanding lyrics and so I've no doubt there are many more lyrical treasures on this album to be uncovered while I'm bouncing my head along to the music.

Join me.