The Regina Spektor album is good. (Just a note before we start: I bought the "Bonus Track Version" off of iTunes, and while I feel like it dilutes the through-line of the rise-and-fall of the album, it's worth it for the extra tracks, which flesh out Spektor's range.)

Anyway, one of you plugged it a while back, probably Susan, I think? Too lazy to check. I didn't buy it off that recommendation (though I still like you, Susan) because a few years ago I stopped buying CDs off the recommendations of all but the smallest of small groups of people. Basically that group boils down to: Matt (sometimes) and Andy (fewer times) and Lars (fewer times, still). And that's about it. It's not that I don't like the rest of you, but what gets me interested in an album seems to be wildly different than just about everybody else, and that's OK. That's the way it should be.
But that won't stop me from having the unmitigated gall to recommend the Regina Spektor CD to you. It's solid and, better yet, it's what that first Nellie McKay album should've been. They remind me a lot of each other, too. Not just the fact that they are pale, petite piano playing gals that deliver strange, quirky music, but also in, it feels like, musical background and goals. Even their elocution, at times, is strikingly similar.
But where McKay gets too caught up in her own cleverness to deliver on the intense promise of her talent and intelligence, Spektor manages to walk that fine line; "Edit" could've used another verse or two's worth of writing but then maybe that's the joke of it, given the lyrics. Even songs like "Uh-Merica" which could've devolved solely into an excercise, Spektor still manages to come up with the goods, in this case with the lyric "there's nothing like / emptying a cartridge / at the sun." Good stuff.
I bought the McKay album off the strength of "Ding Dong" (which is the best song on that album) and felt burned when McKay's cleverness couldn't sustain itself enough to make up for her unwillingness to settle into a form. And while Spektor display some of that same restlessness, the individual songs themselves are brilliant little self-contained gems. Whether the slow dance of "Samson" (brutal in its simplicity), the danceable meloncholy of "Hotel Song," the scattered geographic play of "Dusseldorf" the thick Soviet swell of "Apres Moi" or the bright, slickly produced and ingenious pop of "Fidelity" and "On the Radio," Spektor switches gears between songs, rather than mish-mashing everything together like McKay.
Anyway, that's just my take. I welcome disagreement.

A further question: where does Fiona Apple fit into the petite, piano-playing songstrix conversation? And is there anyone else like these three that I've missed?

(Fuck! I did my whole review and forgot to mention "That Time," which rocks hard, and, additionally, could've been one of those songs that devolved into crap after starting out with a clever (or, well, semi-clever) premise. And then it almost does and then ... BAM! She pulls it out and hits you with the last half of the last verse and completely kicks your ass. Or, mine, at least. Shit. So good.)