After her brilliant performance at Bowery Ballroom last night, Regina Spektor is in the running for being one of our fave outsider songstreses whose music you can actually buy at Target (Note to Sony - LET OUR PEOPLE GO!)
While lots of peeps have tagged her as a Ani-to-be, Spektor's show proved that she is on some other shit entirely and that shit happens to be amazing. Taking the stage with a small backing band (who would dissappear and reappear throughout the two-and-a-half hour show), Spektor spent the night commanding her songs rather than playing them. She commanded her audience too - when one of the security dudes got chirped with a message on his walkie talkie, half the room turned around to stare at him with a "c'mon dude, she's killing it" kinda face.
All of the weird chops and cuts that make her piano playing so flavor were right where they needed to be, as was her shining voice. Spektor's at her best when her singing and playing are running all over the place (think Tori meets jagged stop/start rock) and she's spinning crazy threads and absurdist narratives about the city, statues of Jesus, corporate America and um, people getting into something good while listening to her music.
We've only now started to get into Soviet Kitsch (holler at that hat!), but it looks like we'll be spending a few afternoons with the windows open, digging into her other stuff too - even that song with the Strokes.
Speaking of which, there was so sign of the ex, but one look around the room let you know that everyone was in love with Regina Spektor, even if they didn't know it yet.
