If I hear another song about angels

Regina Spektor’s new album is coming out in six days – yep, that’s right, six days! I’m not sure if it’ll be in Australia then too, but I hope so! Otherwise a download will have to suffice until I can get my hands on the real thing.

I love introducing people to Regina when I get the chance. The first time I heard her was at Emily’s place and I remember being struck by how beautiful and unusual her voice was. In first year I wrote a ‘music memoir’ piece for creative writing. Even though I don’t really like it, I’ll paste a paragraph or two in since it explains my Regina obsession:

” The Consequence of Sounds.

October, 2006.
Six weeks of high school left, and my favourite time of day is the walk home from the bus stop. Juliet, my thirteen year old sister and I, share the earphones of my ipod between us and dawdle on our way; stopping to get hot chips at the milk bar, skirting around the footy oval and weaving our way through the naked trees by the tennis courts. We are listening to Regina Spektor’s Soviet Kitsch album. On it’s cover, Regina is surrounded by Russian Babushka dolls, swigging from a bottle of vodka and looking mischeviously back at the camera. She is Russian/American, growing up in Moscow and now living in New York. Her lyrics are a minefield of pop-culture and literature references; she sings about everything from Hemingway to Oedipus to Samson and Delilah. Her songs are thoughtful and intelligent, and she is the first artist introducted to my insular musical world that makes me want to scream ‘oh my God, this is music!’ everytime I listen to her. I am an immediate convert only seconds after hearing her mix of classical piano and ecclectic punk at a friends place. Unexpectedly, Juliet my jumps on my bandwagon. When we get home, we grab out the bongo drums, instil ourselves in the lounge room by the piano and begin rapping out to one of Regina’s crazy songs, ‘Pavlov’s Daughter’ or ‘Consequence of sounds‘.

March, 2007.
I am at university and fast becoming, in the words of Regina an ‘incurable humanist’. I feel liberated from the suffocating environment of my small Christian high school. Although i had a great group of friends there, I always felt like a square peg in a round hole. At uni, everyone is different -there is no ‘right’ way to be. I no longer feel that I have to fit into a mould. I am starting to think for myself, really think, for the first time. I can behave how I want, wear what I want. Uni is a forum for self discovery. I am overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge in the world and how little of it I posess myself. But the prospect of how much there is to learn thrills me. I find myself with a ridiculous grin on my face just by being among people who are, although all so different to me, so like me. I want to jump up and down in my tutes with sheer joy at the discovery that other people think in the same way as me, have the same questions as me, appreciated the same things. I sit there and listen to people describe and bring to life thoughts and feelings that I share. I want to shout ‘Yes! I feel that too!’ It’s like someone has written‘You are not alone!’ across the sky. “

In retrospect it’s somewhat dramatic, and I think that piece was a lot more about me than the music (probably why I didn’t get the best mark for it). It’s interesting how music becomes the background of life though. Looking back, you can connect a song or artist with a certain part of your life, and all the associated feelings or emotions that were present at that time. My music taste seems to be constantly evolving. There’s some CD’s that I don’t really like to listen to anymore because they remind me of low times in life. But Regina has been one artists who has had a big effect on me in both happy and sad times. I think it comes down to the fact that she embodies the different = beautiful ideal. And I like that alot.

This is the music video for Laughing With.