brian

Artist: Regina Spektor

Album: What We Saw from the Cheap Seats

Regina Spektor plays piano reasonably well, and has a breathy but flexible singing voice fond of chirps, coos, swoops, creative weird mouth noises, and really awkward melisma (switching notes mid-syllable). My family and I adore her, and she’s had chart success, mainly with Fidelity from 2006’s wonderful Begin to Hope, but I can imagine why her songs could drive someone batty. Her strengths are childlike, […]

Artist: dEUS

Album: Keep You Close

dEUS, on Keep You Close, build smoky, minor-key rock grooves and lock into them, building and shaping each over the course of about five minutes. Their singer Tom Barman, the American among these giants of the Belgian scene, used to remind me of Kermit’s nephew Robin the Frog and/or Emmet Otter and/or Gobo Fraggle. His vocal tone still remains from those comparisons, but Barman’s shed his boyishness (though less so […]