Regina Spektor’s gift for writing exquisite melodies is complemented by her earnest and often searing reflections on love and the meaning of life, as well as a preoccupation with redemption and resurrection. The singer-songwriter’s eighth album, the reflective Home, Before and After, is awash in melancholy, yet it’s not completely without hope.
On songs like “Raindrops,” “What Might Have Been,” and “Loveology,” Spektor pines for an absent or former lover. The latter finds her musing about the beauty of communion with others, taking solace in other people as opposed to looking for meaning in a more abstract belief system—hence the song’s self-consciously goofy title.
Elsewhere, Spektor bitingly satirizes the ways in which people disappoint each other. “One Man’s Prayer,” for one, features a dramatic vocal performance backed by a string section and synth swells as Spektor sings of a man using a woman solely to gratify his ego. The catchy “Sugar Man” explores a similar subject, caricaturing the relationship between a possessive partner and their more submissive counterpart, with Spektor cautioning in the second verse to not confuse “sugar with love” lest you “bite the hand that feeds you cake.”
A few tracks on Home, Before and After, though, are less fully realized. “Up the Mountain” mashes up early-‘00s pop and hip-hop as Spektor’s singing vacillates between talking and rapping. Though admirable in its attempts at blending several genres and vocal approaches, the track feels awkward and busy. Less purposeful is the album’s centerpiece, “Spacetime Fairytale,” a nine-minute piano ballad that fails to progress melodically or structurally.
But while some of its sonic experiments aren’t entirely successful, Home, Before and After is spiked with humor and pathos, and Spektor holds the two in balance as skillfully as she ever has. Throughout, she uses her signature art-punk sensibility to offer an emotional connection for listeners—a means of finding joy, solace, and, possibly, even redemption.
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