Regina Spektor - 'Begin To Hope' (Warner Music) Released 10/07/06

Usually with Regina, there’s a bit of a mix bag of musical experiments, albeit some of them sounding a bit shh-. ‘Begin To Hope’, disappointingly transpires to be a hopeful title. ‘Fidelity’s a non offensive number to start this new album off sweetly. The message is potent: “I hear in my mind all these voices, I hear in my mind, all of these words, I hear in my mind all this music and it breaks my heart”; but the magic is lost in the jolly repetition in which she sings it. ‘Hotel Song’ carries on in this chirpy voiced, keyboard enhanced, electric drum numbed version of the potential between dear (dear) friends, it seems. Lines such as “come into my room and let me show show shooow you…” depress rather than impress.

If you didn’t know ‘Better’ you might think for a while that Avril Lavine was responsible for this number, er, two. It’s all about whether her kiss in the sore place will make ‘you’ feel better. Unlikely. ‘Samson’ is a nice little piano and vocal (like Elton J, but with Regina S vocals) based tune. In a land where strings accentuate choruses, and love really did exist. ‘Field Below’ is the same but not, and it seems even though a little Bob Dylan got some hearing first, it was not enough to turn things around.

It’s quite an advisory collection, but not in the sense that parents should be warned for the children’s sake but more for themselves or that their children might be rightly advised wrongly. Warning should read: if child utters song in speech like manner and starts to sound like a self help book, DO NOT WASH. ‘On the Radio’ seems to have missed out the ‘Edit’ part of its description, and deserves overly friendly radio play on one of those ultra commercial stations. There actually is a song called ‘Edit’, she repeats “you can’t edit, edit, edit, edit”, but you can just skip it, and surely that’s just as effective. This one’s not as bad as its predecessors though, so there may be no need to bother with such vicious behaviour.

‘Apres Moi’s more like the Regina we know, and love her feeling some passion in the notes, in the language, in the getting carried away with herself. Her love for the piano, the tale, voice manipulation and experimentation runs into ‘20 Years Of Snow’. So very good of her to pair the best songs up for the listener’s convenience, and these good manners continue onto ‘That Time’.

For comparison’s sake a listen to Regina’s last album is a depressing act (it’s far superior and brimming of unrealised potential); and on the other end of imagination any of Nora Jones being comparable is also depressing. While last album ‘Mary Anne and the Grave Diggers’ can sometimes jut at times, it can be justified as coming from someone with a personality; the opposite can be said of this collection of these dreary tales. One can only begin to hope that for the next album Regina will find her – more interesting - self again.