With her twelfth album, Ana Egge set out to do something new and different…Between Us marks a new pinnacle in her career of consistent highs.
Ana Egge – Between Us
Storysound Records – 24 September 2021
Ana Egge recorded ‘Between Us’ in Brooklyn, working with an inclusive diversity of musicians she’d never played with before, stating, “It’s up to me to work for an equitable, inclusive community as much as I can in my life and career”. As well as striking up a songwriting collaboration with Mick Flannery and keeping a dream journal of melodies and ideas that came in her sleep, Egge also turned to producer Lorenzo Wolff to craft a new sonic direction. The result is an album that strikes out in new directions while still maintaining the essence of what has gone before.
Inevitably, the pandemic experience and the accompanying social unrest has impacted the material and her approach to themes of relationships. The album opens with the warm horns of the soulful Memphis roll of Wait A Minute about taking time to work things through (“When you cut me when you put me offside/Then you lose me then you pick at my pride/And I wanna hear you I want this to be better/But we gettin’ nowhere If we don’t go together”). Switching to a ruminative fingerpicked acoustic, The Machine which, nodding to Cat Stevens, she describes as Father and Lesbian Daughter, speaks of living with someone who loves fixing up old cars (“Walk out back I always find your head inside an engine/With your rag pushed into your back pocket/Hand me ratchet pass me socket/I pretend to be taken by resistors and cables/Filters carburetors and fuel injection ratio”) as a way of avoiding life that spins into a number about a generational communication gulf (“you could understand me but you would have to try”).
It’s back to a fuzzy jazzy soul feel for the languorous and brittle You Hurt Me, which, featuring percussive flute, is one of several songs about troubled relationships (“I don’t wan’ talk to you all you said left me to/Wondering what I did you hurt me/A few things happened I guess/You moved I stayed you worked I played/And we faded away…I shoulda seen it comin’ I guess/A knife in the back is always like that”). The tempo is taken back up slightly for the circling brass coloured rhythms and puttering drums of Heartbroken Kind, which touches on how things can bring the hurt back to the surface (“Gotta skip the song babe if it say his name”) and that familiar feeling of dialling his number and “Prayin’ that he picks up hopin’ that he don’t”.
A bluesier We Let the Devil, from whence the album title derives, takes a harder edge with its distorted guitar intro, minimal nervy drum pattern, trumpet and keyboards, reflecting on how pride means we too often keep picking at the sore rather than letting it heal (“We let the devil come between us/Now he doesn’t wanna go/He wants us to keep us fighting”).
A scratchy guitar chug lays the ground for the intimate, breathily sung, and narcotic Don’t Come Around (“Because the truth to you is too cold…Your eyes can’t see what the mirror don’t show”), a personal song with synth underlays about calling out someone on their abusive behaviour.
A country influence percolates through the brass-flavoured busy drum rhythm Be Your Drug, capturing the giddy sense of falling in love (“In the makin’ of a perfect storm/Never knowin’ where the will came from/Just like that the wheels were spinnin’”).
Things get personal again on the steady swaying bruised Americana of the solo-penned, flute-tinged Lie Lie Lie about the difficulties in getting someone you love to see past their intolerance (“It gave her comfort the drinking did/Just like the smokin’ that’s what she said/She’d cover for him he don’t mean it/He’s not a racist he’s only jokin’”). With a definite air of Cohen to it, the slow walking Sorry is a list song of sorts (“I’m sorry you’re a sucker for the stories that I tell/I’m sorry there’s no water at the bottom of the well/I’m sorry you got roped in to this sorry little plot/You’re sorry I’m so sorry when I’m very clearly not”) that again rummages through the complex feelings when things fall apart (“You’re not sorry that you love me you’re not sorry you can’t change/You’re not sorry for your weakness I’m not sorry for the end…I’m sorry for the lying that I witness in myself/And I’m sorry for the wealth of time I couldn’t ask for help/ I’m sorry for the little heart I placed into your hands”).
Striking a musically whimsical note with sound effects created by her seven-year-old daughter singing through a cheap echo microphone, the penultimate fantasy flirting Want Your Attention (“How you let me linger a little babe/All I want is you to get closer babe/I can feel that your eyes are on me too/I can make you follow my every move”) rides an infectious groove with Egge’s vocal at its deepest, suggesting a huskier Suzanne Vega, while the jazzy keyboards complement its light and breezy manner.
It ends with its most autobiographical song, the movingly poignant, acoustic stark We Lay Roses, written with Gary Nicholson as a cathartic elegy for her nephew and his “beautiful beautiful brown eyes”, the horns midway and at the end a sort of last post as you can hear her voice almost crack.
Another outstanding example of how the enforced introspection and isolation the pandemic wrought has resulted in artists reconfiguring the way they approach their craft, finding new pathways while building on their established foundations, Between Us marks a new pinnacle in a career of consistent highs.
Pre-Order Between Us: Amazon | Proper
Visit: https://www.anaegge.com/
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez