The FIrst time I heard Regina Spektor was memorable enough that I wrote it down: October 14, 2003, at the Patio Lounge in Indianapolis, IN after a Long Winters/Death Cab for Cutie show. As the club emptied out, the front-of-house guy put on an advance of Spektor's record as a kind of sonic palate cleanser for a PA that had just been through a night of loud rock.

The simple song--solo piano and vocals, with lyrics about dying flowers--had the curious effect of silencing the thinned crowd, and making it hard for people to leave, though it was nearing 2am on a school night. Within minutes, the same folks who had been gathered around the stage in clusters hoping for a word or two with the headliners were swarming the board, asking who the hell was making these haunting, funny, bizarre, and beautiful sounds--and where could they get a copy. "Regina Spektor," he said. "Best live performer you've ever seen. Her record is amazing, like from outer space. No label." Sigh.

Of course, it turns out that Spektor was on tour with one of the most famous rock bands in the world at that very moment. Strokes associations notwithstanding--in addition to touring with them, she collaborated with the band on the excellent "Modern Girls and Old-Fashioned Men" B-side--it took more than a year for Spektor's latest record, Soviet Kitsch, to find a label home in America, but import copies and digital downloads were available throughout 2004.

Glowing praise for Spektor has appeared in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, Rolling Stone, Spin, and every other media outlet that even pretends to cover pop music. If her music remains largely undiscovered, it could be that the press attention has focused as much on her fancy friends as it has on her songwriting. But you know, whatever it takes.

Spektor was discovered in the downtown New York scene known as anti-folk, a loose agglomeration of self-consciously bohemian artists known for their arresting performances. It's not hard to imagine her shining in this context. Aside from the throaty richness of her poly-accented voice and the deftness of her piano playing--classical influences (shades of Brahms in "The Flowers") alongside classic pop style (shades of Paul Williams in "Carbon Monoxide")--Spektor's music has a masterful sense of making her songs up as she goes.The songs on Soviet Kitsch have unorthodox structures, adventurous multi-octave singing (sometimes words, sometimes sounds), and multi-instrumental accompaniment that comes and goes as though it were being dreamed rather than scored.

This isn't to suggest that the songs aren't written; it's just the opposite. They're so well written as to preserve the magical sense of being discovered each time you hear them. It happens most noticeably in the lyrics, which swerve between dreamy narrative, random observation, and nonsense sound making--she frequently vocalizes noises like "duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh" or "dszhv-dszhv- dszhv-dszhv," as though to accompany her solo piano with an imaginary band (an incredibly winning trick that can be found on almost every Harry Nilsson recording)--in keeping with the instrumental tendency to radically change time, key, and feel seemingly at random.

The words offer the best kind of stream-of-consciousness; the sound of each phrase suggests the next ("you're going in-in, for the kill-kill, for the killer kiss-kiss, for the kiss-kiss"). She sometimes gets stuck on a single word or phrase and repeats it like a kid learning to be enamored of her own mouth. Just as often, however, she drops some absurdly effective image ("I'm in your mouth/ behind your tonsils/peeking over your molars/you've eaten something minty") that makes a seemingly playful song resound with deep science; in this way, Spektor has a lot more in common with 1964-'65-era Dylan than with the contemporary piano divas she's bound to get lumped in with.

(Incidentally, there's not a trace of Joni Mitchell influence until the very last song, "Somedays.") On "Chemo Limo," the rapid-shifting style allows her to tell a surprisingly moving story of a dying woman who decides to take her kids for a ride in a limousine rather than waste her money on chemotherapy. It's the kind of trick that only a fool would try and only a master can pull off. Regina Spektor shows all signs of being the best parts of both.

sean@thestranger.com