Regina Spektor at The Warfield

by Jon Bauer

After a bit of a delay when Regina Spektor contracted COVID back in October, she finally performed a spectacular show to an adoring crowd at The Warfield on March 5th, 2023.

Floating effortlessly between a grand piano, keyboard, and an electric guitar, and even a drumstick on a wooden chair – Regina played a mix of material from her new album she playfully called “unnamed,” but is actually called “Home, Before and After,” older material pulling from her discography, and even some fun-loving a cappella songs that imagined what the world would look like if it were “Regina-fied.”

Several songs were particularly poignant as she dedicated one to a friend’s son Jack that had died recently in San Francisco, and another that was in tribute to the “mind numbingly stupid war in Ukraine” with lyrics partly sung in Russian.

One funny moment was when she had a small wardrobe malfunction and needed to implement a quick fix by going off stage for a double sided tape modification that she joked might cut off the circulation to her hands – she quipped “stay tuned!”

She ended the show with an encore of her hit “Samson” that left the audience gleefully humming and singing long after she left the stage.

Setlist:

Ain’t No Cover (a cappella)
Folding Chair
Becoming All Alone
Loveology
Prisoners
Better
Reginasaurus (a cappella)
Poor Little Rich Boy (keyboard, and drum stick hitting wooden chair)
Ballad of a Politician
Silly Eye-Color Generalizations (a cappella)
Eet
Après moi
Raindrops
Baby Jesus
On the Radio
What Might Have Been
Bobbing for Apples (guitar)
That Time (guitar)
Spacetime Fairytale
Two Birds
Man of a Thousand Faces
Fidelity

Encore:
Samson