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Regina Spektor
Wednesday · Bogart’s
Part songstress, part pianist and all beast, Regina Spektor is a tour-de-force in the murky world of singer/songwriters. Born to a violinist father and a music professor mother in the former USSR, Spektor emigrated to the United States when she was 9 years old and eventually settled in the Bronx. The heavy influence of her musical family led her to pursue the piano, which she had to leave behind in a politically charged Russia.
With 2004’s Soviet Kitsch, Spektor was ushered into the league of dynamic women pianist all-stars, channeling the quaint and often quarrelsome sounds of Tori Amos (pre-Scarlet’s Walk), Fiona Apple and the Dresden Dolls. Two years later, Begin to Hope ostensibly secured Spektor’s musical foothold with whimsical songs like “Fidelity,” the track voted “No. 1 Song of 2006” by SIRIUS Radio. The music video for the song — where Spektor, donned in a matronly gown, lathers herself in technicolor sand and glitter in a ramshackle kitchenette — made her a household name. While other songs on the album are delicate and moving, they have the distinction of coming from nowhere. Spektor almost irreverently fashions her songs from everything except her life. The most personal mark of Begin to Hope is when she begins to sing in her native language.
Part of Spektor’s appeal is her inventive melodies, quirky vocals and often nebulous lyrics that seem to bloom and branch from the subliminal.
Spektor has extended further to blend her style into the pseudo-sophomoric “anti-folk,” the Brooklyn-spawned genre that is equivalent to the career of Neil Young if you were to remove his genitals, feed him Lexapro and make him work the late shift at Crate and Barrel. A quick listen makes one take himself less seriously. (Ryan McLendon)
Frisbie with The Frantic and The Shadow Complex
Thursday · The Poison Room
In late ’90s Chicago, guitarists Steve Frisbie and Liam Davis concocted a Power Pop quintet with the inherent chops to redefine the genre. Named for their frontman, not the Whammo flying disc, Frisbie was so inherently powerful that their demos were getting airplay in Chicago and they were generating next-level buzz before they’d even released an album.
When the quintet finally released their 2000 debut, The Subversive Sounds of Love, they were almost universally hailed as the next wave of great Pop bands, with the sweetness of Jellyfish, the edge of Matthew Sweet and more than enough originality to distinguish themselves as talents in their own right. One of the band’s greatest draws was having three gifted songwriters, Frisbie, Davis and drummer Zack Kantor, whose diverse, cryptic and multi-layered compositions were consistent fan favorites.
Kantor’s erratic behavior due to manic-depression eventually led to his departure. Frisbie and Davis, clearly sympathetic to their friend’s situation, released unplugged versions of Kantor’s songs on 2003’s period, which also signaled the end of the band.
Steve Frisbie and Davis maintained a presence as a duo, but the band remained a non-issue until late last year when Frisbie and Davis put together a new electric ensemble and began playing brand new songs, many of which have surfaced on Frisbie’s transcendent new album, New Debut. Reviews have been nearly as ecstatic as those that greeted Subversive Sounds, and even more heartening is the fact that Frisbie is making the Midwest rounds almost immediately upon its release.
Here’s hoping that this iteration of Frisbie can finally make good on the promise of what could be one of the greatest Power Pop bands of the past two decades. (Brian Baker)
Jupiter One with Halos Were Found at the Landing Site
Saturday · The Poison Room
With a name that could be a NASA Space Station on the fifth rock from the Sun and playing analog keyboards that sound as big as pump organs, Jupiter One shows love for the ’80s without getting carried away. Sure, their music is fun, not to mention that Mocha, their keyboardist, loves ’80s sci-fi soundtracks, but there’s plenty to take seriously about this New York band of five.
Their first single, “Countdown,” hit radio stations in June and prepared them for lift off. Resourcefully, they dusted off a late-’70s Mattel Optigan organ and used it to mimic strings on their song, “Mystery Man.” And growing up listening to soulful poets Shuggie Otis and Donny Hathaway, as well as Arena Rock bands from Black Sabbath to Electric Light Orchestra, they don’t fit with mainstream music’s endearing attempts to recycle Reaganomics-era New Wave.
“We grew up in the 1980s,” says the Jupiter One drummer Dave Heilman. “We’re products of that, but not just that. We happen to have this more sophisticated, vintage equipment that’s more delicate, but we look at our music the way a Grunge artist like Kurt Cobain would have; as something raw.”
Blending three keyboards and two guitars, Jupiter One’s orchestral renderings of Punk and Jam-band Funk pay silent respect to groups like Pink Floyd and Rick James’ Stone City Band. So don’t expect to walk into their set at The Poison Room and hear the lead singer croaking his way through The Romantics’ “What I Like About You” or see people with arms snaking in S formations doing “The Safety Dance.”
“A lot of the ’80s music (was) very polite, but we’re not,” Heilman says. “It’s not a kitsch thing.” (Mildred C. Fallen)
This article appears in Oct 3-9, 2007.
