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AFTER MONTHS OF LOCKDOWN, the word “home” has accrued all sorts of new connotations, but it has always signified different things depending on the circumstances. Plans for this recording of eight world premieres on the subject, written expressly for mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert, were in motion even before the pandemic. The inspiration for these songs, of which Gaissert proves an impassioned interpreter, was her family’s move to a new home after fifteen years. The resulting musical journey starts with “Archaeology,” a meditation by librettist Royce Vavrek on the paint, primer and pencil marks that mask the layers of history in the walls of a dwelling. David T. Little’s music moves from sustained strings to an off-kilter, atonal waltz, with the violin executing complicated runs over plucked string bass, sounding almost like spirits in the walls trying to get out. There’s a spiritual element, too, to Rene Orth’s Songs from Exile, settings of two poems by eleventh-century Chinese exile Li Qing Zhao, which Gaissert impressively sings in Chinese. Orth’s music is surprising and engaging, alternating a delicate classical feel with experiments in sound and texture. In “Dian Di,” Gaissert dubs her own background vocals over a panoply of effects both vocal and instrumental, including pointillistic syllabification, slides and percussive hits. In the second song, “Distant Dreams,” she employs straight-tones and sprechstimme, occasionally narrowing her voluptuous voice into a trimmer focus. Martin Hennessey’s setting of Paul Eluard’s “Nous deux” lulls the listener with a tonal, post-Romantic approach, then grows stormy before returning to the comforting opening sonorities that represent two people at home wherever they find themselves, as long as they’re together.