REGINA SPEKTOR (Royal Festival Hall, 07/09/07)



Irreverently eschewing the down-and-dirty realism of trad folk for a more whimsical perspective on life, Regina Spektor is the foremost representative the burgeoning anti-folk movement. Her natural charm and literate, off-kilter style are enough to merit attention on their own, but it’s that astonishing voice, blessed with both enviable range and incredible flexibility that marks her out as one of the shining lights of contemporary singer-songwriting. Accentuating her New Yorker drawl for the rollicking numbers or playing up her roots for her more Russian-influenced work; hitting angelic high notes with cut-glass clarity or punctuating melodies with guttural vocal tics- it’s a voice that has more dimensions and character than almost any other songstress one could care to name.

It’s a versatility that’s finely complimented by the variety of her material. Skewed, but acutely personal, offbeat but not abstract, her lyrics are a world away from the over-earnest hogwash of Katie Melua or James Blunt. Poignant ballads like Samson intermingle with surreally comic romps like Baby Jesus; the charming Ghosts of Corporate Future manages to be both funny and oddly touching, whilst the Slavic drama of Apres Moi is as dark and forbidding as Siberian winter. The ultra-polished production of most recent album “Begin To Hope” is stripped away by the minimalist set-up of grand piano and singer; the multi-layered instrumentation giving way to inventive arrangements and creative vocalisations, and even her string-driven masterpiece Us loses little of its beauty in a bare bones rendition. There are times that she skirts dangerously close to the abyss of self-conscious kookiness, perhaps appending an incongruous scat-line or vocal eccentricity when simplicity would have worked better but one can forgive her these occasional indulgences when the vast majority is of such consistently high quality. There's no denying her quirkiness may not appeal to everyone, but for the rest of us, Regina’s the best thing to come out of Russia since Smirnoff.