Chicago show at Schubas Live Review:Alina Simone haunts Chicago with a Siberian legend’s spirit. July 25, 2008, at Schubas By Selena Fragassi

I’ve never been a big believer in ghost stories, but when told by a captivating storyteller like singer Alina Simone, faith can easily change in a matter of 45 minutes.

“Tonight, I will be presenting the music of Yanka Dyagileva as interpreted by me,” Simone narrated before kicking off a two-person set that cut into the meat of her latest release, the aptly-titled Everyone is Crying Out to Me, Beware (54-40 or Fight).

Sung entirely in Russian, Ukranian-born Simone explains that Everyone is a tribute album filled with the creative composite of the late Siberian singer Dyagileva, born in 1966 in Novosibirsk and mysteriously drowning in the same spot 24 years later — but not before imprinting her legacy on the Siberian punk movement.

With the room dark and the audience perfectly silent in anticipation, the opening chords of the powerful riptide “Half My Kingdom” came to feel like a séance as Simone quickly transformed herself into a medium for Dyagileva’s lost soul, delivering song after emotional song filled with the same ghosts of turmoil, rage and depression that haunted Dyagileva’s own life.

Although most in the audience looked in dire need of subtitles — like most well-done foreign films, the beauty of the story was not lost on the lot as Simone combined the perfect Hitchockian medley of director and main character all at once.

At times, it was hard to tell where the line was drawn to separate where Dyagileva ended and Simone began, a balance that may have been more weighted had Simone given us a glimmer into her original material that preceded this latest release. But the moments when the parallel worlds combined were when the spirit filled the room.

As the eight-song set continued, Dyagileva’s words began to fuel the fire behind Simone’s voice and best became engulfed in the surrender of “My Sadness is Luminous.” Loosely translated, the lyrics repeat, “No one knows how sad I am … how rotten I feel” on overdrive. Delivered in Russian only added to the dark atmosphere as the bold phonetics and range of inflection took over Simone’s mouth to forcibly push out each word.

Before ripping into “Beware” and ending with “From Great Knowledge,” Simone told us of her Russian grandmother — at first so pleased to finally understand her granddaughter’s music on Everyone; but, after coming to grips with the material’s dark meaning, called Simone back to declare her grave disappointment.

It must have been something that was lost in translation for the rest of us. For even though it was a language only Simone and her grandmother knew, it was a story and a feeling we could all understand.