Edge of Everything by Birds and Arrows: A Review

Edge of Everything, by Birds and Arrows

Have you ever churned through a typical day – working, driving, eating, driving, shopping, cooking, cleaning, living-but-not-really-living – when, out of the blue, a memory appears? You might be mopping the kitchen floor. You might be going over an argument you had with your spouse. You might be thinking of a meaningless conversation; you might be thinking of nothing. Then, suddenly, a memory floods your mind, so that all you can do is sit down on your kitchen chair, hand still holding the mop, and lose yourself in a moment past. Maybe it was with someone you loved. Maybe it was yourself alone, when you were different... Maybe it was a dream you had, or the touch of a parent's hand on your shoulder. You let go. And the memory feeds you, from within, changes you, so that when you pick up your day again, you pick it up consciously: this is where you are now. 
This is the underlying experience of listening to Edge of Everything, the 2015 album by Tucson partners/musicians Andrea and Pete Connolly, the members of Birds and Arrows. 'Haunting' is too harsh a feeling for the ten songs on this fifth album; 'reminiscent' might be more fitting, even though the first song, "Desert Home", comes on strong and steady. It is followed by the childlike singsong repetitions of "Ghosts in the Water", almost a melodic jump rope rhyme. "Trainwreck" has a slow inevitability, an apology for what cannot be avoided, and "Wolf" is deceptively gentle. However, the song that spoke to me the most was the soft and instrumental "Blackbeard's Lullaby". The sliding of the guitar, the restraint inherent in the long pauses, even the brevity, all made me feel as though I were stretched out in the grass watching the clouds go by on an endless afternoon. Each of the songs on this album are unique, and yet fit together, hand in hand. The overall effect is a remedy for that hamster-on-the-wheel trap that twenty-first century life forces us into, over and over. This is an album of quiet and powerful reflection.