This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. 20 years ago, Regina Spector, who was born in Moscow,

was just another aspiring musician in New York. She was lugging around a backpack full of self-produced

CDs and playing at little clubs in the East Village, anywhere that had a piano, really. But anonymity

inspector's case, it didn't last long. She toured with the strokes in 2003, and once she had a

record deal of her own, her ambitions grew well beyond the borders of indie music.

Her album Begin to Hope went gold, and Specter began moving into more of a pop vein writing

anthems about love and heartbreak, loneliness, and death, and God.

And she even wrote the theme song to Orange as the New Black.

And everyone is waiting, waiting on you, and you've got time.

Spector's songs are powered by years of classical training on the piano, and a voice that often goes from a whisper to a roar in just a flash.

Her new record is called Home Before and After, and to mark the occasion,

the New Yorker's music critic Amanda Petrusich joined Regina Specter in a living room with a grand

piano to hear some of the new songs. So, Regina, it's been quite a while since we've had a record

from you, who's counting, but 2016 was the last time. And it feels like since that moment, the world has kind of turned itself

inside out a few times. I'm curious how the last six years have been for you. And I know there's

been some performances and a residency and some kind of one-off recordings. But how have you been spending that time?

Well, you know, it's one of those things where as I've been doing some interviews with this

record coming out, that's how I found out how much time has passed. I'm not really aware of time

in a kind of useful way.

So I think I have a serious time management problem.

And I think that a lot of the time when the world is normal and when there's structure,

...