Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope

Singing Lady, Regina Spektor sounds every inch (or centimetre, if you prefer the metric) as pained, fragile and damaged as Lady Day, Billie Holiday. That voice does creep into several of the other tracks on Begin To Hope, moving CD closer Summer in the City included, and the sparser the song, the more anti-folk than producer-polished, the better the voice. But Spektor's let down by a dearth of quality tracks. Indeed, there's a lot of gurgling, dribbly light weight nonsense and general all round daft noises on here, skidding ungraciously into something that wouldn't be amiss on a Lily Allen effort. This is Spektor's third - and weakest - album. On The Radio is amusing pop but it could well be Nelly Furtado, such is the depth of the track; ditto opener Fidelity. There is enough quality here to warrant a purchase. It's just a shade disappointing, that's all.