Regina Spektor Is On Her Own Hero’s Journey

Mary Siroky
·4 min read
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The post Regina Spektor Is On Her Own Hero’s Journey appeared first on Consequence.

Regina Spektor still waits for inspiration to strike.

The singer-songwriter, who is about to release her first album in more than half a decade, explains that she isn’t the sort of person who sits herself down at the piano when she doesn’t feel like she has something to say. She’s often struck by peers and friends who have developed different types of discipline, people who craft songs with the skill of someone assembling furniture, but her process has always been much more organic.

“It’s like somebody screaming at a fish pond for 10 minutes and then like putting in their their fishing rod,” she tells Consequence of trying to force herself to write. “Where are all the fish? Well, maybe you shouldn’t have brought a megaphone to this.”

Home, before and after, the name of Spektor’s eighth studio album, carries a lot of weight on its own — the concept of home is evocative enough, and it’s then bolstered by the idea of a delineation in time. While the title might, on its own, indicate that its contents lean towards a “COVID album” of sorts, Spektor explains that she had the album name picked out years ago, and had done so before she’d even begun to write the album at all. This isn’t unusual for her, in fact.

“I tend to have the title way before I have the record, or even know what songs are going to be on the record,” she explains. “I started to think about what home was to me in general, and the idea of immigration — and then COVID happened, and then homes sort of became this whole other layer, where like for some people homes were sanctuaries and for other people homes were their prisons.”

Regina Spektor co-produced the album (out Friday, June 24th via Sire Records/Warner Music Group) with John Congleton, who is based in Los Angeles. New York, particularly New York City, is intrinsically tied to so much of Spektor’s identity as an artist; beyond the way that she rose up out of the East Village indie scene, Regina Spektor as we know her today has hosted a Broadway residency at the iconic, twinkling Lunt-Fontanne Theater. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio presented her with a street sign with her name at the Bronx Walk of Fame.

It’s a bit ironic, then, that she recalls falling in love with California at the same time as writing what she now describes as her “most quintessentially New York record yet.”

To her, though, this is just a modern iteration of the hero’s journey, in which our protagonist must exit the safety of the known and brave a mysterious and big world. “All our fairytales are all about leaving home, or being made to leave home; being cast out or choosing to go off on an adventure,” she explains. “We can’t really find our home without really leaving it — and then at some point, returning to it.”

Spektor’s fairytale unfurls over the course of ten songs on Home, before and after. Her now trademark vocal and production quirks are present here, along with existential questions about love, and God, and the grand concepts of the universe. Track 7 pushes us even further into the cosmos with the title “Spacetime Fairytale.”

She also shares that she often revisits the same themes at different points of her life through the unique lenses the disparate times provide — what she may have thought at 17 looks different at 21, and 24 and so on. A concept she examined in a previous record might call to her in a new way in the present day. “A lot of how I write songs, it’s not necessarily from the most conscious of places… I pull on a thread,” she explains. “My feeling of discovering it is not that different, maybe, from the person who’s listening to [a song] for the first time — because as I’m writing it, I’m listening to it for the first time, too.”

For longtime listeners, this mindset of revisiting probably shines through in Spektor’s decision to finally release a studio version of “Loveology,” a track which has previously only existed in unofficial, low-grade live recordings. The dreamy, wistful track, a longtime fan favorite, has finally found its place in this collection — come home, in a sense.

The concept of home is something that can change dramatically over time, and is surely one that’s shifted for Spektor. This album, then, can act as a way to preserve how she felt in this era, and also offers a mirror — whether to see similarities, or perhaps to offer a gateway to an entirely different world worth exploring — for anyone who dives into the new record.

“I guess that idea of home is just going to keep shifting,” she says. “Maybe in 10 years, I’ll look at it and it’ll mean something yet new again.”

Editor’s note: Catch Regina Spektor on tour this fall; tickets are available via Ticketmaster.

Home, before and after Artwork:

home before after artwork
home before after artwork

Regina Spektor Is On Her Own Hero’s Journey
Mary Siroky

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