Music / Soviet Kitsch

The flowers you gave me are rotting
and still I refuse to throw them away

— "The Flowers"

A Soviet collage too!

Soviet Kitsch is the third studio album by Regina Spektor. Released in 2004, it also serves as her major label debut album, and debuts some of the quirks found in her later albums. The album is mostly a Alternative Indie album, but it also takes influence from Folk Music, more specifically, Anti-Folk.

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Tracklist:

1. "Ode To Divorce" (3:42)
2. "Poor Little Rich Boy" (2:27)
3. "Carbon Minoxide" (4:59)
4. "The Flowers" (3:54)
5. "Us" (4:52)
6. "Sailor Song" (3:15)
7. "Whisper" (0:44)
8. "Your Honor" (2:10)
9. "Ghost Of Corporate Future" (3:21)
10. "Chemo Limo" (6:04)
11. "Somedays" (3:21)
12. "Scarecrow and Fungus" (2:29)

Soviet Tropes:

• Alliterative Title: "Sailor Song".
• Beef Bandage: "But I'm a vegetarian, so it's a frozen pizza pie."
• Continuity Nod: "Düsseldorf", a bonus track on the deluxe version of "Begin to Hope" (2006), features a reference to "Soviet kitsch".
• Cryptic Conversation: A conversation between Regina and her brother Bear appears on "Soviet Kitch" under the cryptic title "* * *".
• Dream Sequence: "Chemo Limo" has one about a dying mother of four. In her dream, Benjamin Franklin watches her kids while she hires a limo, reflecting her real-life wishes.
• Design Student's Orgasm: The album cover art is a collage of various Matryoshka dolls and a picture of Regina.
• Eagleland: "Us" is half a deconstruction of Type 1 and half about the Soviet Union, with lines such as "And though are parts are slightly used, new ones are slave labor you can keep", referring to the price immigrants' children pay in regards to suffered stigmas all for the American dream.
• Epic Rocking: "Chemo Limo".
• Face on the Cover: Spektor taking a swig of something.
• Granola Girl: Played straight and later parodied in "Your Honor".
  Gargle peroxide, a steak for your eye. But I'm a vegetarian, so it's a frozen pizza pie.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: "Ode To Divorce", before the piano kicks in.
• Homage: The music video for "Us" is an homage to the silent film Le Locataire Diabolique by Georges Méliès.
• Lonely Piano Piece: "Somedays" is played like this.
• Mood Whiplash: "Chemo Limo" is in itself a profound example. The verses tell of a single mother of four kids being told she has terminal cancer and are appropriately eerie and mournful. The chorus, however, is a bouncy rapid-fire Motor Mouth-ed sass parade of defiance.
• National Stereotypes: Regina plays with her Russian roots by showing herself drinking from a vodka bottle, with a military hat and matryoshka dolls around her.
• One-Man Song: "Poor Little Rich Boy".
• One-Word Title: "Us" and "Somedays"
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: It's pretty clear "Poor Little Rich Boy" is this:
  But she isn't but you don't love her anyway
  And you don't love your mother
  And you know that you should
  And you wish that you would
  But you don't anyway.
• Repurposed Pop Song: Microsoft used her song "Us" to promote one of their projects, despite the fact that it's partially about the fall of the Soviet Union and contains such lines as "We're living in a den of thieves" and "It's contagious." Was the "we are a crumbling Evil Empire" vibe really what Microsoft was going for?
• Scatting: This is a specialty of Regina.
• Shout-Out: "Poor Little Rich Boy" has a line "so goddamn young", in reference to Patti Smith's song "Privilege" from Easter.
• The Something Song: "Sailor Song".

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