If You Wanna Move, It Has to Get Uncomfortable: Ana Egge's Between Us

In a world where we have all the tools for communication at a level we never could have dreamed of before, Ana Egge’s “Between Us” asks why we understand each other less and less.

In some ways, this question’s crystalized in the parent/child, mechanic/helper memories of "The Machine." The two characters love one another, as best they can, but they can't quite connect. The resignation in the child, that they will never know each other as well as what seems so necessary meets the resignation of the mechanic, his usefulness threatened by new technology and new ways of thinking.

What Egge does here, exquisitely, is fight against that resignation with an intense, ongoing focus on the art of communication itself. Like most great music, this starts with the collaboration that goes into building a song, a performance, and a record. This album started with a set of songs written on FaceTime in collaboration with Irish songwriter Mick Flannery. Then, Egge found a keen co-conspirator in producer Lorenzo Wolff. (To illustrate his reach, Wolff has worked with both Taylor Swift and Kanye West.) The studio collaboration interweaves an exciting array of musicians and eclectic sounds to suit Egge's own Brooklyn-by-way-of North Dakota, New Mexico, and Saskatchewan vision. At times bordering on ethereal electronica but always grounded by its plainspoken soulfulness, "Between Us" maintains a certainty of direction as coherent as its roots in Egge's development.

One way to tell that story starts with another collaboration. In 2017, Egge wrote the song "We Are One" with Nashville songwriter Gary Nicholson, an impassioned call for unity, citing those times when our common humanity overrides all other concerns. In response to the divisive political climate the whole world had been suffering, it dreamed of a time when "we finally figured out all that divides us is delusion." It asked, "Don't you want to feel, beneath your skin, that all our differences are nothing in the face of love?" The video--which shows a great cross-section of humanity on New York streets, boardwalks, and parks--revels in the beauty of our diversity and a particular joy when these strangers meet and play around on various musical instruments, tools we use to speak beyond words. [We Are One Original Video]  

In 2019, our divisions deepening, Egge recorded the song with the First Unitarian Brooklyn Choir. It's a beautiful performance, the vocal call and response growing increasingly emphatic and hopeful. [We Are One with First Unitarian Brooklyn Choir]

Then COVID-19 hit, and most of us experienced a new level of isolation and distrust. In the United States, our 2020 elections showed an electorate split in thirds--two thirds divided between two parties, the remaining third altogether alienated from the electoral process. Distrust ran so deep we couldn't even unite to fight a pandemic. 

An eloquent and necessary extension of "We Are One," Egge's "Between Us" is about all that keeps us divided, searching for what we need more than ever: unity, in the face of economic, political and environmental crises that threaten to permanently rob us of our hopes and dreams and potential. 

Key to that search is an inclusive sensibility. The Memphis-style horns that announce album opener "Wait a Minute" suggest the record's spiritual vision over lyrics that fight the chaos of the media that surrounds it. In a breakneck world, the singer asks, "Why don't we take a little time?" In a world of shouted certainties, Egge almost whispers, "I'd love to be sure, of an answer/I'd love to be sure of even one answer." The plan of action comes with its own warning: "If you wanna move, it has to get uncomfortable." [Wait a Minute video]

Tackling that sort of discomfort, the soulful, modest intensity of Egge's vocals play off the diverse instrumentation. It's in the dialectic between the vibrant details of "The Machine" and the stuttering snare and searching keys that punctuate the distance between the two characters. The quietest moments revolve around such contradictions. It's telling that the album's most decisive break up, "Don't Come Around," punctuates its narrative flight with keyboard beeps like searching radar.

The album's vision also means lots of wonderful pop hooks. "The Heartbroken Kind" pulses with sax and bass that offer sympathy for our flaws. [Heartbroken Kind video] "Be Your Drug" delights in Latin rhythms and a joyous trumpet refrain. [Be Your Drug video] "Lie Lie Lie” counters electronic distortion with searching horn and steel guitar. [Lie Lie Lie video] The sleek "Want Your Attention" features a seductive lead vocal by Brooklyn singer-songwriter J. Hoard over a shifting rhythm punctuated by sultry horns and keyboard fireworks. [Want Your Attention "video"]

At the heart of the album lies what might be called the title track, "We Let the Devil" [a line completed by the title phrase "come 'between us'"]. It's a heartbreaking march through the dark wastelands of our shredded relationships. Menacing guitar sets the tone with elegiac horns that cry out against dark, opaque heavens. It's about what everyone has experienced in recent years--an impasse, an antagonism with those we love dearly. Egge sings, "You break my heart/You're just like me/You'd lay your life for what you believe." [We Let the Devil "video"]

She feels her way forward. Conscious empathy is a part of it, as is hope for a common grieving process. The call is to "Look me in the eye so we can get somewhere." I find myself thinking of every devil who ever (to cite "Lie Lie Lie" again) sowed division "to kill and to control." That lies at the heart of our history. And Ana Egge's determined effort to make us see each other whole offers a vision of home not behind but before us.

 

Full disclosure: My introduction to this music began watching my daughter take part in the music video for "Wait a Minute," directed by Marta Renzi. Oh lucky day!