Home, Before and After

For her eighth studio album, Home, before and after, she animates ten unpredictable tracks with a combination of elegant piano accompaniment, overtly playful pop, and a return to dramatic symphonic fare, often within the same song.

This is a colourful, energised collection of work from an artist who could comfortably stay in her own lane, but chooses not to.

Whether she’s swimming around in theories about space and time, or just riffing on a few scales to make a love song, Spektor’s words and melodies on Home, before and after are a dazzling delight.

It successfully adds another wrinkle to her sound with the addition of sweeping string sections, majestic brass horns, and epic flourishes. It also can’t be overstated just how brilliant this album’s pinnacles are, with ‘Becoming All Alone Again’, ‘Up the Mountain’, and ‘Spacetime Fairytale’ standing out as particularly dazzling career highlights.

Her eighth studio album may be her most ambitious yet, but that added weight can lead some songs to run too long or feel overstuffed. She may still be trying to find the right balance between her larger soundscape and storytelling, but Home, before and after is an exciting evolution that feels both old and new.

This incisive, empathetic collection is among her strongest. [Jul - Aug 2022, p.120]

The addition of older tracks onto Home can constrain Spektor’s artistic growth more generally, like on “SugarMan” – which stretches food metaphors to their absolute limit and lacks the staying power of Spektor’s best tracks. However, at their best, the songs of Home feel akin to a warm hug on a cold day.

She’s made another very good album, her first in six years. [Jul 2022, p.33]

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.

On those early records, like Soviet Kitsch, there was a bracing sense of raw possibility. Songs could swing from kooky anti-folk to cabaret to punk outbursts on a whim. Home, before and after, by contrast, sounds like the work of a seasoned professional. Every note is meticulous; every orchestral swell magnificently labored over.