NOTHING to do with the legendary fallen from grace producer with a phonetically same name, Regina Ilyinichna Spektor was born in the Soviet Union and at nine emigrated with her family to the United States.

There are few traces of her home country in Remember Us To Life, this is New York Anti-folk fare. Sassy too. There’s something of the enigma that is Kate Bush about Spektor.

The cover invites you to believe lounge lizard material lies within. It does not. Instead you are met by biting drug referencing lyrics in Small Bills: “All the poets in the alley coughing up blood” and the terrifyingly bleak Grand Hotel, with its tunnel leading straight to hell.

Wish, hurt, crummy and sad are constant friends in these songs, all of which are veneered by an angelic delivery. Regina Spektor is an acquired taste and The Trapper and the Furrier may protest a little too much, to the point of cloying, but overall this album’s message is well delivered and beautifully, hauntingly performed.