Begin to Hope
Third album from the intelligent, eccentric singer-songwriter is her first recorded under major-label contract.
Quietly released in 2004, then rolled out by a larger label in 2005, Regina Spektor's Soviet Kitsch is the kind of eye-opening album that only comes around once in a while. It's not that it's perfect, or that Spektor attempts something that's never been done before. (Anyone wanting to trace her influences could easily…
On Begin to Hope, Regina Spektor treads a delicate balance between her anti-folk past and her present home on Sire Records.
With the possible exception of “That Time,” with its repetitive, Alanis-style lyrics, there’s an underlying hope to Regina Spektor’s music.
Plucked strings conversate with growly chunks of piano before they slide smoothly together, only to cut out for wordlessly-light vocalizations and gentle...