2010-01-14

WARNING: Fanboy loves Regina Spektor

regina spektor, far.

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.)

( . )
( . . )
( . . . )
( . . . . )
( . . . . . )
( . . . . . . )
( . . . . . . . )
( . . . . . . . . )
( . . . . . . . . . )
( . . . . . . . . . . )

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.

9 comments:

  1. I thought she was pretty good on SNL a few weeks back.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ya, she's way cool - but I like her two previous albums much better than the latest installment. i'm sure it'll grow on me. I got to see her a couple years ago on tour - she was funny and totally cute in a dangerous way.

    ReplyDelete
  3. .

    "funny and totally cute in a dangerous way"

    Sounds like the perfect woman.

    ReplyDelete
  4. .

    Two things:

    1. I hadn't and couldn't watch the posted video when I posted it. All her videos are semisurreal. Seems like good branding to me.

    2. There was another lyric I intended to post with this post, but I couldn't remember it. Here it is, from "Dance Anthem Of The 80s":

    There's a meat market down the street / The boys and girls watch each other eat / When they really just wanna watch each other sleep

    ReplyDelete
  5. SO GLAD YOU BOUGHT THIS FINALLY!!! Isn't is awesome!? When we saw her concert in Denver, I couldn't believe how good she is live. I love every song on FAR. So we made the hard decision and we each made an incision, past our muscles and our bones and our hearts were little stones...

    ReplyDelete
  6. .

    It's nice when "different" means something good rather than just "weird for weird's sake".

    ReplyDelete
  7. I hadn't seen this video, but I'd purchased the album. Thanks for posting it!

    ReplyDelete
  8. My favorite off of this album is Human of the Year. I don't know how she intended it, but it somehow reminds me of that same idea you sort of touched upon in your February 1st post. The marriage of the infinite and the mundane within each of us humans.

    ReplyDelete