behind with the release of Begin to Hope, an infectious, savvy collection of piano-driven pop songs that sold more than a half-million copies. Her bouncy single “Fidelity”—with its synth violins, lovesick lyrics, and her crystalline coo—was a TV music supervisor’s dream, scoring scenes on Grey’s Anatomy, Veronica Mars, and Brothers & Sisters. Listeners of Sirius’ Left of Center station voted it the song of the year, and fans watched the video on You Tube more than 200,000 times in two days. She played Letterman, Conan, and Leno, and even serenaded fashionistas at an Oscar de la Renta runway show.
So it’s easy to read into the title of her new album, Far. While Spektor says it was inspired by thoughts of outer space, about “how freaky it is that we are really out there,” it also suggests a strange journey over a remarkable distance and, maybe, into a breathtaking future.
THE DAY AFTER OUR CONEY Island misadventure, we meet at an entirely different tourist attraction, the Museum of Modern Art in midtown Manhattan. Spektor shows up in black leggings, a long black cardigan, a gray T-shirt, and black flats. Her tight ring curls from yesterday’s shoot are limp and frizzy, and her milky skin and ample mouth are makeup-free. The transformation is striking: She’s practically unrecognizable without her trademark red lipstick and easily blends in with the crowd of foreigners and art students streaming through the halls.
There aren’t any particular exhibits Spektor is dying to see—“I just wander,” she says, happily, with the faintest trace of a Russian accent. “But I like when people know shit and then tell me. I’m like, ‘Oh really? Cool!’ ”
Our first stop is a gymnasium-size installation by Martin Kippenberger called The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika.” The work—inspired by the final scene of Kafka’s unfinished novel, when the protagonist applies for a job at a recruitment center—features a tableaux of chairs and desks. The placard tells us it represents America, the land of opportunity, as giant employment agency.
Music, Spektor says, is the only job she ever considered. One of her earliest memories is of her mom playing piano: “I would straddle her, so my legs were wrapped around her from the back, and I’d just hug her the way you would on a motorcycle,” she says, miming the action. “And I would just sit there and she would play.” Spektor started studying classical piano when she was seven, but when her family moved from Moscow to the
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Bronx in 1989, they left their piano behind, so she had to play her Mozart sonatas on windowsills and tabletops, imagining the music in her head. Soon she began practicing on the piano at her synagogue and started studying seriously with a teacher from the Manhattan School of Music.
summer arts camp in Israel. During hikes in the desert, Spektor would entertain her fellow campers with impromptu songs. “I knew I could sing in key because I play music,” she says. “But I didn’t actually think it was a voice that you could sing for people with. It’s like saying, ‘I cook a little bit at home.’ But then someone’s like, ‘Dude, you could be a gourmet!’ And you’re like, ‘Fuck you! I make omelets. Yeah, I’m a gourmet.’ ” Finally, their encouragement was too loud for her to ignore. By the time she got back to New York, she was set on being a singer-songwriter.
We make our way to a photo exhibit of the American West, a much more explicit portrayal of the country as the land of opportunity. A 1972 picture of a suburban family titled We’re really happy. Our kids are healthy, we eat good food, and we have a really nice home (“It looks true,” Spektor comments) shares wall space with black-and-white photos from the 1800s of freshly laid train
S T YLING B Y ERICA BLUMEN THAL; HAIR AND MAKEUP B Y LORAINE ABELES
66 JULY 2009 / READ DAILY EDITORS’ BLOGS AT SPIN.COM
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