(Sept 03, 2008)
Alina Simone My Sadness is Luminous In English, My Sadness is Luminous is an overbearing song title–a brief glimpse of bad poetry. But Alina Simone is no delicate lily, nor was Yanka Dyagileva, the legendary Siberian folk-punk who wrote these songs. Simone — born in Ukraine, living in Brooklyn — performs My Sadness in the language it deserves, and in Russian there is nothing flowery about these words. Simone is alive and ardent, singing her hard heart soft.