Chicago Folksinger We/Or/Me's New Album Is Beautifully Melancholic

By Casey Moffitt in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 28, 2016 4:58PM

photo credit: Liza Mitchell

We/Or/Me is the musical alias of Bahhaj Taherzadeh, a local singer/songwriter who has been self-producing gorgeous albums in the traditions of 1960s British folk music. He's back with a new album to be released Friday which finds Taherzadeh in new, yet familiar territory.

In Everything Behind Us Is A Dream, Taherzadeh once again writes beautifully melancholy songs with fragile melodies, dreamy guitar playing and tasteful, complementary sonic embellishments. The songs are tightly written, by design Taherzadeh told us, which gives them a more organic feel.

"I wanted to work more on refining the songs in the actual writing rather than during the recording," he said. "I feel like I was able to get to the essence of the songs more effectively somehow. With the previous stuff, I had done a lot of ambient, textur-y, layered stuff in the arrangements. In this case, I really wanted to focus on the songs and then focus on capturing a more natural, free-sounding recording."

Gone are the electronic, ambient washes and accents. They've been replaced with strings, piano accompanies and harmonica lines.

"I wanted to be very prepared as far as the way the songs were written and structured so I could just go in and play them," he said. "And then, just getting to play with other musicians helped give it a more live and natural feel, as opposed to me with my MIDI and keyboard. There's no MIDI or any kind of electronic or computer instruments on this record, so it's a more natural sound."

A continued theme throughout the Everything Behind Us Is A Dream is looking to the past and remembering what's really important, how those memories have shaped us and where they might lead into the future.

"As I started to come up with these songs, I started to think about memory a lot and just the dreamlike nature of memory and how memory is not quite reality, but just your perception," he said. "And the longer you go back in your mind, the more you invent what it is yourself. And that was sort of one of the ideas I had from my own life, and thinking about my parents and just how the past that informs you. Your relationship to other people's memories was a big part of it."

He said he also thought about his role as a parent himself, and how a parent's past can inform a child's life.

"My dad is Persian and from Iran originally, but I've never been there. I grew up in Ireland. But his family history and background has been such a big thing in my life. And for me, I'm Irish, but my girls have never been to Ireland. To them it's this abstract place and they just know it from my stories and my funny explanations of what Ireland is," he said.

The album also features Taherzadeh's own guitar style. He's developed a finger-picking technique which allows him to pluck out rhythm lines that complement lead lines, creating a full sound on one instrument. He said he is influenced by guitarists like Mississippi John Hurt, who can make one guitar sound like two.

On his previous efforts, Taherzadeh recorded and mixed his albums at home. He would share files with friends and get theres to contribute, but he put the albums together himself.

"When you're doing that way, you tend to lose all perspective," he said of his previous efforts. "That was my tendency. I would get to the point where it didn't sound like music anymore."

This time around, Taherzadeh traveled to Portland, Ore. to work with producer Adam Selzer to record Everything Behind Us Is A Dream. The album was tracked in about four days.

"We just knocked it out and walked away from it," he said. "It was a very different experience, but really positive."

We/Or/Me performs on Friday Jan. 29, at Heritage Bicycles, 2959 N. Lincoln Ave., 8 p.m. FREE