Regina Spektor: Home, Before and After review — Orchestral, sweeping, and sometimes epic

From a career start in New York City’s anti-folk music scene and being introduced to the songs of Joni Mitchell to hanging out with The Strokes (not forgetting her early teenage years studying classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music) Russian-American singer and songwriter Regina Spektor has come a long way in just over 20 years. Home, Before and After is her first album since 2016′s Remember Us to Life, and threads her life from then to now in a way that is singularly Spektor’s: songs that are left-of-field (perhaps), abstract (certainly), serious in nature (frequently), and imbued with stirring/genteel piano-embellished melodies that stick around (always).

The album was long finished before two important events occurred in her life this year — the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the death of her father — yet culture, language and heritage have always been constant in Spektor’s life and work, and none more so than here. Because of the nature of recording during the pandemic, most of the songs were worked on in isolation outside her NYC home in an upstate converted church. Such solitude is at wonderful odds with the music, which is Spektor-esque to the nth degree: orchestral, sweeping, and sometimes epic without being in any way overwhelming. The centrepiece is the nine-minute long Spacetime Fairytale, which playfully, gracefully and dramatically captures the essence of the album: home is where the heart is. reginaspektor.com