Spiking piano-driven songs of heartbreak with comic turns of phrase, cartoon voices and beatboxing outbursts, Regina Spektor has become her generation's Joni Mitchell – a singer-songwriter who nail-guns emotional truths between wisecracks. Her latest, even tighter and more flamboyant than 2009's Far, may be her best. Exhibit A: "Firewood," which treats mortal illness (a recurring theme for her) with elegant surrealism, imagining a piano used for kindling while boldly telling a comrade to "Rise from your cold hospital bed/I tell you, you're not dying." Elsewhere, "Ballad of a Politician" is sharp satire, instructing a handshaking officeholder to "Shake it, shake it, baby!" Even apparent novelty songs carry a payload. "Oh Marcello" is a Mafioso narrative with outrageous accents and real pathos; "Open" employs a hysterical gasp for air as a percussive vocal device, to unnervingly powerful effect. "All the Rowboats," which denounces museums as "public mausoleums," is telling, coming from a classical-music defector. But more so is "Small Town Moon," with its mouthful of "baby baby"s and "Whoo!"s, working a delicious metaphor for pursuing your own muse, damn the torpedoes. Here's hoping Spektor never stops.

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.