Rock critics are only allowed to use the phrase "greatest living songwriter" to describe a largely underknown artist five times a year. Greil Marcus said so. "Five, that's it," he said. So it's no thoughtless praise that in a year when The Mountain Goats, The Hold Steady, The Roots, The Thermals and Jolie Holland put out CDs, Regina Spektor has earned this meaningless title here. Because she is. The world's greatest living songwriter. And if you disagree then that's fine, you got your five and I got mine, but I'm urging you, please, listen to "That Time" one more time because damn. It starts with a simple, slippy chord progression, and she's like: "Hey, remember that time I found a human tooth down on Delancey?" I would remember that. That's gross. "Hey remember that time we decided to kiss anywhere except the mouth?" That's hot, but no. But I see what she's going for here. This is the incidental music of youthful idiosyncrasy, recalling a time when you got weird just for the anecdotes, when you just didn't know nothing. But there's a dark and numbing undercurrent, even as the song gets rockin': This is a one-sided conversation. "Hey remember that time when you OD'd? Hey remember that other time when you OD'd for the second time?" The music pauses, inhales, teeters on a pyramid tip, looking down on an inoperable scar and a death-cheating smirk, horror story and after-school passion play. OK, now let's rock again: "Well in the waiting room waiting for news of you I hallucinated I could read your mind. And I was on a lot of shit too but what I saw, man, I tell you, it was freaky." Was it a close call or is her best friend gone gone gone? Can't tell. Top five, no lie.