Saturday 12/06/04 Regina Spektor @ Barfly, Cardiff

Regina Spektor thrives on a passionate contradiction. Both genteel and angry, her infantile features are inconsistent with the adulthood of her eyes, just as her complex keyboard skills are starkly juxtaposed with her ability to sing with nothing but a guitar string, a drumstick, or the tapping of a heel for accompaniment.

A Moscow-Brooklyn hybrid, Spektor began her career when plucked from obscurity by The Strokes. She was asked to open their national tour and also featured on their b-side, ‘Modern Girls and Old Fashioned Men’.  It’s not often that you see an unknown act get handpicked by a big US band, so the chances of her being hunted down for a second time, by The Kings Of Leon this time, seems pretty absurd. This story, along with her incongruous anonymity within the UK, brings the curiosity of tonight’s crowd to an anxious peak. Cameras are on standby, and the bar remains strangely empty. 

She’s worth the wait. At 9pm sharp, Spektor clambers onto stage and smiles infectiously before breaking into a vocal performance that couples Patti Smith with a smattering of Joni Mitchell or Fiona Apple. Blending together an eclectic mix of Jazz, Honky-tonk, Soul and Blues, she moves with ease from the more simplified, but comical chase of ‘The Soup’, to the much more poignant and complex intricacy of ‘Samson’ and ‘Carbon Monoxide’.  Her lyrics are breathed into life through unconventional means; not only does she sing but snorts, burps, snarls, rants, snores and whispers her way through a labyrinth of keyboard accompaniment.

At the end of the show, Spektor sighs, “Thank you all for coming, especially seeing as most of you don’t even know who I am”.  

Humble as hell, It’s obvious to all of us that Spektor won’t be ours for long.