Regina Spektor is so sweet her dandruff must be Kool Aid mix. She sweats stage presence and charisma. On Easter Sunday night at the 9:30 club, she performed solo, commanding the attention of the packed venue.
Spektor's recorded output is full of lush strings, drum machines and electronic keyboards, but Sunday night it was just the piano and her pipes (and the occasional guitar). While seeing her songs realized with a band might have been nice, Spektor proved she was a consummate performer - totally at ease, cracking jokes with the crowd and completely in charge. She knew every in and out of her songs, her instrument and her voice; she knew how to use everything to make the most efficient use of the minimalist setup.
She played 19 songs and in that time she suspended disbelief, making it easy for the audience to imagine a full band while simultaneously breaking down the fourth wall. At one point she joked about how it's impossible to take someone seriously who's playing a key-tar and meaning it, right before she did the duty of at least half a band by herself, a feat necessitating a degree of illusion.
Indeed, she manages this simultaneous connection and distance from the audience in more than live performance. She regularly updates a blog and allows - nay, encourages - fans to record her shows. Still, there's mystery to Regina Spektor, a capriciousness that remains unpinned down.
"Carbon Monoxide," from 2003's "Soviet Kitsch," opened the show, with the almost Fozzie Bear-like bridge: "As I walk-a walk-a walk-a walk-a walk-a walk you home/Yeah/I'm so cool I'm so cool I'm so cool." Spektor's quirks are apparent in both her songwriting and her mannerisms onstage, and she somehow controls them enough to make them endearing instead of annoying. Spektor lived in Moscow until age nine, and if you listen closely enough, a pleasant mix of Brooklyn and Russian accents is noticeable.
Sometimes Spektor draws as much from more left-field artists like Bjork and Patrick Wolf as much as '90s singer-songwriters like Tori Amos, to whom Spektor has been recently compared. She completely shreds the piano at times, while at other times she pounds it like an angsty adolescent. She let her voice out if its cage on some songs, like "Better" and "Fidelity," from the upcoming full-length "Begin to Hope," and sometimes sang with a whine or crackle not unlike folk harpist Joanna Newsom, or evoked the quirky vocal percussion and accents of the aforementioned Wolf.
Spektor's eclectic mix of influences and output has garnered Spektor attention from both mainstream media and more, shall we say ... literate sources. She got her big break on the home for the up-and-coming, NPR's online unsigned music showcase, "Open Mic" - a distinction also shared by the likes of Sufjan Stevens.
For two songs, Spektor played guitar, most notably on "That Time." For the most "rocking" part of the show, "That Time" also embodied the full spectrum of Spektor's thematic oeuvre. In addition to verses about making out and summer fun, she recalls "Hey, remember that time when you OD'd?/Hey, remember that other time when you OD'd for the second time?/Well, in the waiting room while waiting for news of you..." The song is both laugh-out-loud funny and uncomfortably raw and sad. It's the same device used by famed PRI radio show "This American Life" - make 'em laugh till they cry, then make 'em cry.
