Alina Simone lives in Brooklyn but was born in Ukraine, a fact that her work tends to confront either directly or not at all. There was the 2008 album Everyone is Crying Out to Me, Beware, where Simone covered songs by the Siberian folk-punk singer Yanka Dyagileva. There is Simone's new memoir, You Must Go and Win, which addresses "the lure of a mythical Russian home" she left as an infant as well as the foibles of the American music industry. And on her new album, Make Your Own Danger, there's a song about Baba Yaga, the legendary Slavic witch whose house walks around on chicken legs. Under its gypsy veneer, it reminds me a bit of the Smashing Pumpkins' "Disarm", which is telling. Read the story here
