FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
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EVEN though it is quite hard…
to find a copy of Regina Spektor’s Begin to Hope on vinyl, it is available through Amazon. This is an album that I really like and wanted to recommend. Released in June 2006, the fourth studio album from Spektor is brilliant. I really like Spektor’s albums, though I think Begin to Hope might be my favourite. The hugely successful single, Fidelity, is one of her best songs. If you have not heard of Regina Spektor or are unsure where to start, Begin to Hope is a good place to start. I do hope that there are plans to reissue the album on vinyl so that it is more widely available. It is such a strong and astonishing album from a songwriter whose lyrical and actual voice is like nobody else’s! I will get to a couple of reviews for the 2006 album. Before then, NPR provided an interview (conducted in 2006), where we discover more about Spektor’s upbringing and what she brought to Begin to Hope:
“On her new release, Begin to Hope, singer, songwriter and pianist Regina Spektor sings in her native Russian for the first time.
"It feels very good to sing in Russian," the 26-year-old says. "It feels so good inside my body."
A Russian Jew, Spektor and her family fled the anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union and emigrated to the Bronx when she was 9 years old.
Spektor recalls how difficult it was to leave behind the family piano, which she began playing when she was 6.
Songwriting was difficult for her, she says, after studying classical music from the great composers. And as a result, she often incorporated hiccups and other odd sounds into her work. The hiccup sounds, she says, were like discovering she had a tambourine in her throat.
She also talks about how, unlike many songwriters, her songs aren't personal.
"I think songwriters are more related to fiction writers," she says. "The Odyssey was a story in song. To me, that's so beautiful, all those painted characters, all those travels and adventures."
And of songwriters who sing in their own voice, Spektor says, "It's almost like putting a ball and chain around your foot and being sentenced to being yourself. Who the hell wants to be themselves all the time? It's so boring".
I have heard Begin to Hope a few times. It is an album that provides so many treats and wonderful moments. Fifteen years after it was released, I do not feel it has lost any of its brilliance and impact. Spektor’s most-recent album, Remember Us to Life, was released in 2016. Many people will hope that there are more albums from Spektor in the future. She is one of the most original and consistent artists around.
Just before wrapping things up, it is worth bringing in a couple of reviews. The first one is quite brief. This is what The Guardian said when they reviewed Begin to Hope:
“Russian-American songwriter Regina Spektor is a self-proclaimed "dork", conjuring up memories of Tori Amos. It's an apt comparison, because Spektor's first major-label release sets her up as a serious rival for Amos's queen-of-whimsy title. If elected (not inconceivable, considering the big-budget production that gives her girlish voice a very commercial cut-glass clarity), she'll bring to the job a highly appealing, open-hearted freshness. Her adopted Manhattan is the inspiration for these songs: the punk-folky That Time name-checks Delancey Street. The Muscovite in her surfaces on Apres Moi, whose drama stems from its sweeping grand-piano backdrop and the impassioned "Poka grohochushaya slyakot!" that closes the song. There's hardly a moment here that fails to enchant. As she says: "Vesnoyu chernoyu gorit”.
If you can go and find a copy of Begin to Hope online, it is definitely worth investing in. Seek our other Regina Spektor albums and get involved with a fabulous artist. Her songwriting and incredibly deliver has the ability to take you somewhere very special indeed. It is small wonder that Begin to Hope received acclaim when it was released.
AllMusic provided a deeper review when they investigated Begin to Hope. As usual, they made some interesting observations about one of 2006’s best albums:
“£On Begin to Hope, Regina Spektor treads a delicate balance between her anti-folk past and her present home on Sire Records. Though the label re-released Soviet Kitsch in 2004, Begin to Hope is Spektor's first original material for Sire, and it feels more like a major-label debut than Soviet Kitsch ever did. The album's big, glossy production and preponderance of drum machines and keyboards inches Spektor toward territory that isn't exactly mainstream, but is closer to a more conventional adult alternative singer/songwriter sound. Her songwriting mirrors this, too: "Field Below," which finds her wishing for the countryside while living in the city, has a mellow, appealingly rambling vibe that grows from the traditional singer/songwriter roots of Joni and Carole; "Better" takes the breathy, literate, pretty side of Spektor's music and tailors it into a radio-friendly single. "On the Radio" takes it a step further and becomes a smart, funny, and sad meta-single, with lyrics like "We listened to it twice/Because the DJ was asleep" backed by poppy synths and beats. But even though Begin to Hope's first few songs might suggest otherwise, Spektor is much too freewheeling and quirky a talent to stick to the straight and narrow for the entirety.
Show tunes, classic soul, the Bible, and the backs of cereal boxes are all inspirations for the album. And whether she quotes the melody from Doris Troy's "Just One Look" and pairs it with lyrics about orca whales on "Hotel Song," or begins the lovely, confessional closing track, "Summer in the City," with the line "summer in the city means cleavage," Spektor uses them in unexpected ways. She also places some truly surreal, heady tracks toward Begin to Hope's end: "Lady" is a torchy number arranged for piano, saxophone, and typewriter, while "20 Years of Snow" is buoyed along by impressionistic keyboards that twinkle and tumble like a just-shaken snow globe. "Après Moi," one of the album's most impressive tracks, showcases her classical piano training, her Russian heritage, and those biblical influences to ominous, paranoid effect. Leaving the more unique, quintessentially Regina Spektor-esque tracks at the end of Begin to Hope isn't so much a bait-and-switch as it is a clever way to lure in and loosen the inhibitions of new fans. The album feels like getting to really know someone: at first, it's polite and a little restrained, but then its real personality, with all of its charming idiosyncrasies, finally reveals itself”.
Begin to Hope is an album that unravels more as you listen and come back to it. I love all the sounds and innovations that Regina Spektor brings to her albums. It is a delight to dive in and hear all these details and interesting moments. If you can, go and spend some time with…
THE brilliant Begin to Hope.