Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Home is the place where when you have nowhere else to turn, they take you in.

We have become perhaps to rich in our definition of home in the last decade, keen as we are to acknowledge the various parts that make up our life, the home here, the home town, the birthplace, the motherland, the native soil, and never forgetting the area in which we feel as though we should call home, when in truth home is only ever the place where you are happiest, where you feel safe, where the abundance of our memories are made, where hopefully if life has been fair, our loved ones are waiting for us at the end of time.

Time is a kind of home, we reside in its shadow, we bask in its security, we feel the pressure of its judgement and wrath, we are comforted by its memories…Home, Before And After, is the place where the memories take shape in the present and one in which the incomparable Regina Spektor unlocks the doors, throws open the windows and draws back the blinds to stock of her life in this moment, and one in which Time is examined as if it had been released from certain bounds and limitations.

The extraordinary sense of lyricism to be found in Ms. Spektor’s work is not be overlooked, the gift of timing and poetic beat is to be applauded roundly, and as tracks such as Up The Mountain, the gloriously delivered One Man’s Prayer, What Might Have Been, Sugarman, Loveology, and Through A Door, is sensational, riveting, positive, and yet underlined with a sadness of expression that is highlighted in the dedication to her father, Ilya Spektor, who sadly passed away just a few short months ago.

It is in the presence of home that we revert to a childhood like existence, and in which we understand how growth does not always mean embracing entrancing happiness, rather it is the meeting of the present when we are too big for the rooms we once inhabited, but not ready to move into the position of former giants and heroes; this is the time between time, the tick between the tocks, that we must embrace and find our own life whilst honouring those who have supported us unquestioningly.

A wonderful, insightful, playful, herald of an album; Home, Before And After is the place to put your bags down on a once familiar floor and take stock of what comes next. 

Ian D. Hall