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.
