There was a recent amusing piece in the papers on the phenomenon of 'earworms', those stubborn songs that get stuck in your head on an endless loop and refuse to budge. Well, to that list of insanely and often unfathomably catchy tracks, you can go ahead and add the new single from Russian-born New Yorker Regina Spektor.
Regularly labeled 'kooky' by the lazier breed of music journalists and lumped in with Tori Amos because she happens to be an idiosyncratic female singer-songwriter with a liking for a bruised piano melody, Spektor more closely resembles a poppier Martha Wainwright with a dash of Rufus's theatricality thrown in for good measure.
On The Radio, the first track to be released from her upcoming album Begin To Hope, is a brilliant slice of summer pop, infused with optimism and urban yearning. Spektor's voice is a joy too, silky and sweet, but with an agreeably emotive edge. The lyrics veer from the distinctly odd (there's something about hearses and bees in there, I think) to the sweetly uplifting as Spektor waxes nostalgic about listening to G'n'R's November Rain on the radio, against a simple but insistent pop hook. "The solo's really long," she muses about Axl's epic ballad, "but it's a pretty song". As indeed is this.
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